Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

[Ted Harding]

On 03-Jan-07 Michael(tm) Smith wrote:
> Ralph Corderoy <address@hidden>, 2006-12-31 12:42 +0000:
> 
>> For those of us that think browsers are a poor way to read
>> documentation like man pages, e.g. poor searching, no remembering
>> the scroll-bar position, etc., presumably there will be a way we
>> can keep the old behaviour on a per-user basis?  I like using
>> less(1) because of the immediacy of the result in the context where
>> I'm working, or sometimes vim(1) for the same reason plus it turns
>> man pages references into tags with a tag-stack.
> 
> You could use a console/curses-based browser, right? lynx or
> elinks or w3m. I'd think paging through a man page with one of
> those would be much the same as you have with less(1) now. Except,
> for one thing, you'd actually be able to follow inline hyperlinks.

This has pros (like being able to follow hyperlinks) and cons -- like
the fact that with 'less' you can scroll through line by line, while
with 'lynx' you get a screenfull of text at a time, which flips to
the next screenful when you reach the bottom (so you cannot see part
of the previous screen along with part of the current screen).

When you're reading man-pages, sometimes you really need to see the
whole of the text about a particular thing, in order to understand
it clearly. In my experience, this would normally be more important
than being able to follow hyperlinks. Hence I would usually be using
'less', and would want to continue to be able to do so!

Best wishes, and Happy New Year, to all,
Ted.

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Date: 03-Jan-07                                       Time: 11:34:49
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