Fwd: Re: "full" man pages, please?

[Mike Hodson]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Mike Hodson" <address@hidden>
Date: Mar 21, 2017 12:26 PM
Subject: Re: "full" man pages, please?
To: "Bernhard Voelker" <address@hidden>
Cc:

I third this, and have mentioned it in the past at least once if not more
than...

Why is it so hard to textdump _both_ --help _and_ the texinfo _into a
manpage_?!?!

We need one single source of all information. Not 1 half useful one which I
can get from --help _anyway_ but it is incomplete, and another complete one
that requires more tooling to properly view and has been impossible for me
in my 20 years of using Linux to understand how to navigate.

This is a bug if people take time out of their day to explain why it is not
useful.

If your only answer is to just use texinfo, you are being blinded by
historical 'the way it is stupidity when the public is definitely not
satisfied with the answer.

Mike

On Mar 21, 2017 11:55 AM, "Bernhard Voelker" <address@hidden>
wrote:

On 03/21/2017 09:24 AM, Harald Dunkel wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> I highly appreciate your work to provide excellent tools for
> decades.
>
> There is one thing I would like to ask for, though: Would you
> mind to support "full" man pages instead of the "full-docu-can-
> be-found-in-info-or-on-the-web-only" pages (e.g. dd(1), cpio(1))?
>
> Advantages:
>
> - no break in your regular workflow, regardless on which
>   unix-like system you are logged in or which man page you
>   try to access
>
> - no page breaks, but full documentation on a single page.
>   Its very easy to navigate.
>
> - focused on providing the information. The user interface
>   is provided by more or less, common to other tools.
>
> I am not asking you to drop the info pages, of course, but IMHO
> keeping things simple and the DOTADIW approach should still be
> considered as a major feature of Unix-like systems.

First of all, the Texinfo manual is the primary way for documentation
in GNU projects:

https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/GNU-Manuals.html#GNU-Manuals

Second, maintaining the same as man pages is redundant work.
Therefore, we choose to generate the man pages from "--help"
output.

https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Man-Pages.html

Re. "nice" and "printouts" (mentioned by Reuti): what's wrong with
the HTML (one page or single node format), ASCII, DVI or PDF formats?

https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/

So after all: while the advantages may be tempting, the effort to keep
texinfo and man in sync is too high for coreutils.

Consider the mess in findutils: some information exists in the man page,
while other is in the Texinfo manual.  Not useful either.

Have a nice day,
Berny