Re: [Groff] Status of the portability work, and plans for the future

[Larry Kollar]

Eric S. Raymond wrote:

> ....  man(1) is not sacred, and I actually find attitudes like yours
> kind of insulting, as though you think long-time man users like me are
> so utterly lacking in mental flexibility as to be unable to cope with
> even a tiny speedbump on the road to better things.

Heh, you should have heard some of the growls over the early drafts  
of my paper on writing effective manpages. My own tech writing  
experience suggests that there is a definite point beyond which most  
readers just get lost in a large manpage -- I like to point to bash 
(1) as an example. If a more complete document is available, say in / 
usr/share/doc/bash/, why not try to identify the things that readers  
look for most, put *those* things in a manpage, and refer them to the  
full documentation for the rest? (Got my paw smacked, I did!)

So they're out there, and likely to be vocal.

--
Larry Kollar     k  o  l  l  a  r  @  a  l  l  t  e  l  .  n  e  t
Unix Text Processing: "UTP Revival"
http://unixtext.org/