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Are Manpages Becoming Obsolete?
Navarre asks: "While I really like the GNOME desktop, and it's good to see that it's being taken up by HP and Sun, I noticed that it's a little weak on manpages. While I know that GNU prefers Info pages, I personally hate them and greatly prefer man. It's bad enough already when half the GNU apps I use refuse to give decent manpages in favour of info. Now GNOME includes help in HTML format, but no manpages that I've seen. Are we now at a point where we cannot survive on a Unix box without some kind of web browser? What happened to that great common-demoninator of a terminal, troff and a pager? The minimum bloat on Linux continues to increase, and I question if it's a good thing. How much trouble is it to include a manpage anyway?" I'm all for better documentation in formats that have richer functionality than troff, but let's not forget that man pages have worked for years and is still standard on just about every Unix system out there. I'm not as much of a fan of GNU Info, but that's probably more due to my familiarity with man than anything else. How do you all feel? Should we retire man for info or HTML (you can always use lynx)? Or do you think man pages still have a place on modern Unix systems?
On a side note, I'm sure maintainers who currently do not have man pages wouldn't mind it if someone out there would take the time to convert whatever has been provided into proper man pages.
Well, you are not really forced to use an Info browser. I just searched using Google and found a site with a info2html tool.
For me, however, the main argument is that there is an excellent info browser in my programming editor and it is very easy to switch from programming to reading. OK, so there is the W3 browser implemented in elisp, but it does not quite cut it for me. The web pretty much need a "real" GUI browser.
And there is no way you will be able to have a ready-to-print typeset manual using an HTML format. If you have a manual in Info, there are sources marked up using texi, and then you have a TeX backend. It is unbeatable for printing quality. To me this is one of the most remarkable aspects of Info. The markup is so carefully chosen that a document is instantly ready for both pleasurable online viewing and printing.
Lars
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Reality or nothing.
While not a true GUI solution, (X)Emacs offers the command M-x manual-entry which loads the man-page in a buffer. You may then navigate using scrollbars if you are so inclined and, more importantly, click on references to other man-pages to get those in its own buffer.
Make sure to have keyboard shortcut for that command in your C-mode. It makes for a speedy lookup of the function name you have by the point.
The strength of using man-pages in an emacs buffer become apparent when repeatedly working with very long man-pages.
Lars
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Reality or nothing.
But I also like HTML help as well. I have looked at info help, but didn't like it as much.
The thing I like about HTML is the ability, which is lacking in man pages, of hyperlinks - when a command or program you are getting help on refers to another command or program, man pages highlight what command/program it is, but there is no simple way to just "go" to that other man page - you have to start another term window and "man" it.
How hard would it be to write a script to replace "man", in say, perl, and this script would perform the function of converting man pages into browsable HTML pages (using Lynx?) or automatically use Lynx if the page is already in HTML, or if the page is info based, convert that? Something like this should be possible.
I can't think of too many systems where you couldn't have a simple browser like Lynx to view help with. HTML makes perfect sense of help files, IMO.
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
I don't much about Gnome and their help system, but I think it is sad if they are not using the man pages.
However, one should not see the Gnu Info system as a competitor, as they have totally different purposes. The man page should be fairly short and give you a speedy answer. The Info manual should give you access to complete manuals for large systems. For instance, a complete bash manual does not belong in a man page. Yes, I know it is there, but how managable is it? Then on the other hand, I should not have to use an Info browser to get the command line options for 'cat'.
In Info, you get easily navigated sections, hyperlinks, and a good index system. In addition, a manual set in Info can also be beautifully printed on paper since there is an excellent TeX backend. The result is beyond what you can get using HTML!
Lars
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Reality or nothing.
In contrast, the BSD man(1) pages are supreme. They are concise, accurate, and informative. They always exist. They are highly important. As an example of how important man(1) pages are: a significant amount of traffic on the OpenBSD mailing lists is on the best way to concisely express something in a grammatically correct way on a man(1) page.
Unless the Linux world changes soon and rediscovers the unix man(1) page, I personally will be dumping my beloved Linux in favor of the superiorly documented BSD.
Ken Hendrickson
Something to remember about man pages is that it's trivial to produce a nicely formatted, easy-to-read hardcopy version:
groff -man manpage.1 | gsThe other formats might be a little easier to read online, but I've always found the hardcopy versions a little harder to read.
This might be generational - for the first decade of my career man pages were the only option, and I learned the standard C library from a printed version of those pages.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
True, but don't pick on Linux too much here. I often telent into my Linux box to check a man page because the AIX man pages are worse!
Texinfo has its place for longer docs - I love the emacs info pages. Remember that it can generate TeX as well as info, so you can get pretty hard copy as well as hypertext, which is pretty sweet. Still, failing to have a man page that at least documents the basic usage is k-lame.
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Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
(*sigh* Even as "Plain Old Text", the formatting is hosed. That's supposed to be two colums above.)
The man page is dead, simply because there are more HTML browsers than nroff browsers.
See Dan Bernstein's slashdoc standard.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Man pages are extremely adequate for almost every purpose, and most software. There are a few reasonable criticisms, and a lot of unreasonable ones... here goes:
For Gnome, there's no reason to not rely upon something standard like man (or even info) over HTML, when man and info translate much better to HTML than vice versa.
--Matthew