Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: Grant Edwards <grante@××××.com>
To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
Subject: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Date: Fri, 06 Feb 2009 14:25:29
Message-Id: gmhh83$rbh$1@ger.gmane.org
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh? by Neil Bothwick
1 On 2009-02-06, Neil Bothwick <neil@××××××××××.uk> wrote:
2 > On Fri, 6 Feb 2009 08:17:46 +0100 (CET), Jesús Guerrero wrote:
3 >
4 >> Well, in that sense, ALL the man pages of for anything that's more
5 >> complext than ls will be horrible. There's no way to can shorten
6 >> it unless you take features off from bash. It's a very powerful
7 >> shell.
8 >>
9 >> Same goes for my other example: fvwm.
10 >
11 > And for mplayer/mencoder. The problem is that man pages are
12 > single pages and therefore only suitable for fairly short
13 > documents. The alternative, as used by zsh, is to split the
14 > information into several man pages, then you never know which
15 > one to look at. procmail is a good example of how to do this
16 > badly, with procmailrc's documentation being split across
17 > three man pages.
18 >
19 > That's why info is a much better format for complex or
20 > multipurpose programs.
21
22 That's one opinion, but I think info very difficult to use. I
23 much prefer a single page. Stuff in info is always broken up
24 into pieces that are way too small. Whatever organization
25 there is supposed to be in info is impossible to perceive while
26 you're looking at a page, and it's way to easy to end up in
27 documentation for something completely unrelated.
28
29 > You'd expect to find a list of contents, chapters and an index
30 > in a printed reference book, electronic documentation should
31 > be no different.
32
33 Perhaps, but I think info is an awful implementation. A single
34 large man page is much better, and a single large html page
35 with links in it is far, far, better.
36
37 --
38 Grant Edwards grante Yow! HELLO, everybody,
39 at I'm a HUMAN!!
40 visi.com

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Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh? Neil Bothwick <neil@××××××××××.uk>