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SubjectRe: info format (was Re: Linux 2.2.11pre4)
On Fri, Aug 06, 1999 at 12:28:09PM -0400, Stefan Monnier wrote:
> >>>>> "Tim" == Tim Ricketts <tr@oxlug.org> writes:
> > But perl 5 has a perfectly good set of man pages.
>
> No. Perl is the quintessential example of a program whose manpages are mostly
> unusable simply because the documentation is too big for the `man' way of
> accessing it. If `man perl chop' worked, it would be OK, but it doesn't. An
> indexed and hyperlinked manual is much more valuable for those kinds of
> applications.

man -s perl chop, then put all perl manpages in /usr/man/manperl. this is
an entirely solvable problem using the existing man package.

> PS: the reason why TeXinfo is better than HTML in my world is that it allows
> better quality printout, and is much quicker to access (maybe it's because
> my browser is hopelessly more bloated than my info reader, but since my
> info reader is Emacs, that seems unlikely). Also standard navigation
> shortcuts like "up" "next" "index" etc... are sorely lacking from HTML.

texinfo is fine as long as you use tkinfo to view it, the default textual
browser is awful (really really really awful).

but the real problem, which inspired this highly offtopic thread, is that
the man pages are not being kept up to date with the info pages.

seeing as one of the stated goals/features of texinfo is an ability for a
texinfo file to generate both info and man pages, this is inexcusable.

perhaps this requires a patch to the man package so it generates an nroff
file from the texinfo source when necessary. then people can have texinfo
originals installed instead of nroff or info derivatives.

--
Nathan Hand - Chirp Web Design - http://www.chirp.com.au/ - $e^{i\pi}+1 = 0$
Phone: +61 2 6230 1871 Fax: +61 2 6230 1515 E-mail: nathanh@chirp.com.au

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