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Re: Emacs minimised
From: |
Lee Sau Dan |
Subject: |
Re: Emacs minimised |
Date: |
25 Feb 2003 15:32:47 +0100 |
User-agent: |
Gnus/5.0808 (Gnus v5.8.8) Emacs/20.7 |
>>>>> "Jesper" == Jesper Harder <harder@myrealbox.com> writes:
Jesper> Keith O'Connell <kroc@blueyonder.co.uk> writes:
>> Yes its there, now I know to look. The problem is I did "man
>> emacs" and it wasn't there. I figured if it wasn't in the man
>> file it was worth asking.
Jesper> '-iconic' is documented in the "Icons X" node in the Emacs
Jesper> manual. For GNU programs it's usually always best to look
Jesper> in Info first:
That's true. But this is also a problem. Even though I've been using
Info to look up many things, I still have the unix habit of using
'man' when want to find something in a hurry, and assuming that
everything is there. Failing to find something in the man page is
already frustrating! So, I will forget about Info at that point! :(
Info is good, if I want to study the program for 15 minutes or more.
But for quick lookups, man pages are still much better. (Many people
are simply not interested in learning yet another program.)
The other problem is that there are too many places to look for such
information. "--help" is usually the most up-to-date, but too brief
to be useful for studying. Only helpful in recalling options and
their names. man pages have the tradition (on unix, at least) of
being "complete", but the Gnu programs do not follow this tradition.
This is the problem. The man page of many Gnu programs are already
very detailed, and hence give people a feeling that it is, like the
other unix man pages, very complete. But the truth is: the man pages
are not complete and sometimes even out-of-date. One often has no
clues about this by just studying the man page, they miss much
information.
I think a reference to the appropriate Info page in the SEE ALSO
section would be very helpful. This is what a2ps does in its man
page:
SEE ALSO
a2ps(1), card(1), fixps(1), pdiff(1), psset(1),
texi2dvi4a2ps(1).
The full documentation for a2ps is maintained as a Texinfo
manual. If the info and a2ps programs are properly
installed at your site, the command
info a2ps
should give you access to the complete manual.
Emacs's man page has something similar, but NOT in the SEE ALSO
section. It is in the DESCRIPTION section. It is thus easily missed
by the impatient who are looking for command line options.
BTW, I like the man page of 'xv'. At least, I'm not confused. Here's
an excerpt:
The documentation for XV is now distributed only as a
PostScript file, as it has gotten enormous, and is no
longer very well suited to the 'man' page format. Print a
copy of the (100-ish page) manual found in docs/xvdocs.ps.
If you are unable to get the manual to print on your
printer, you may purchase a printed copy of the XV manual.
Click on 'About XV' in the program to get further informa
tion.
--
Lee Sau Dan 李守敦(Big5) ~{@nJX6X~}(HZ)
E-mail: danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee
- Emacs minimised, Keith O'Connell, 2003/02/21
- Re: Emacs minimised, Jesper Harder, 2003/02/21
- Re: Emacs minimised, Keith O'Connell, 2003/02/21
- Re: Emacs minimised, Kai Großjohann, 2003/02/21
- Re: Emacs minimised, Keith O'Connell, 2003/02/21
- Re: Emacs minimised, Kai Großjohann, 2003/02/21
- Re: Emacs minimised, Jesper Harder, 2003/02/21
- Re: Emacs minimised,
Lee Sau Dan <=
- Re: Emacs minimised, Kester Clegg, 2003/02/25
- Re: Emacs minimised, Eli Zaretskii, 2003/02/25
- Re: Emacs minimised, Jesper Harder, 2003/02/25
- Re: Emacs minimised, Le Wang, 2003/02/25
- Message not available
- Re: Emacs minimised, Lee Sau Dan, 2003/02/26
- Re: Emacs minimised, Kai Großjohann, 2003/02/27