Re: (Getting rid of) man pages

[Marc Espie <espie at quatramaran dot ens dot fr>]

In article <vyzzp3zsoxd.fsf@issan.cs.uni-dortmund.de> you write:
>Joe Buck <jbuck@Synopsys.COM> writes:
>
>|> The key is to define the purpose of man pages.  They are not complete
>|> documentation, the gcc manual is.  Rather, they should be a quick
>|> reference, describing how to invoke gcc, giving the meaning of the flags,
>|> and pointing the user to the gcc manual for further details.
>
>That's what info gcc 'invoking gcc' is for.  With the current texinfo
>snapshot you can even say info --show-options gcc.

If you want to get rid of manpages, first get out an info stand-alone reader
that is easy to use, *merges seamlessly with existing manpages*, and is 
easy to use.

I know, the reason info is ugly is so that you will use emacs instead.

Some of us wouldn't touch emacs with a ten foot pole, though.

Some of us don't like info because the resulting documentation is generally
badly thought out and formatted (not so for gcc, though it's not perfect yet).
Speaking for my own church, BSD manpages tend to get to the point: plain
text tends to do wonders to one's crispness, and end with reference texts
that go to the point.

For an automatic conversion, I've found a tool in our ports tree that is 
called rman, and is supposed to convert formatted man pages back to 
unformatted nroff.

(check ftp://ftp.cs.berkeley.edu/ucb/people/phelps/tcltk/rman-3.0.5.tar.Z
that's what the port Makefile says)

No, it's not a free tool, it has a restrictive licence, somewhat.
But I don't particularly care. 

I'll try to give it a run on invoke.texi.