Re: (Getting rid of) man pages

[rich-paul at rich-paul dot net]

On Fri, 23 Apr 1999, Joe Buck wrote:

> > That's what info gcc 'invoking gcc' is for.  With the current texinfo
> > snapshot you can even say info --show-options gcc.
> 
> This is why I think that the gcc man page should be obtained by coverting
> invoke.texi.
> 
> The vast majority of software on any Unix, GNU/Linux, or BSD system has
> documentation in the form of man pages.  Users expect to type "man".

Just to put in my two cents, 'invoking gcc' very nice for what it is, but
it ain't no man page.  One of the great things about man pages is that
they have a very specific set of sections, normally in the same order.

Near the top, they have a canonical list of flags, so that when you find
some invocation you don't grok in some makefile somewhere, you have a hope
of finding a clue.  It won't tell you all the whys and wherefores, but it
will give you just a QUICK idea of what the damn thing does.

I'm not against, in principal, converting to man pages from texinfo, but
I've never seen anything in a texinfo file anywhere as quick and useful
as a man page.

A better solution might be to use the perl pod format, since it's extremely
simple, and converts to troff as well as sweetened and unsweetened ascii.
It's easier to use ( read *MUCH* easier ) than troff, which is as ugly
as postscript, and most importantly, the results will be paged through
things that search with the / key, as they should.  <G>

Of course the man page maintainer would have to have perl, 
but who doesn't? ( We can make this two ... two ... two flamewars in one! ;)

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