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Are Manpages Becoming Obsolete?

Posted by Cliff on from the let's-not-forget-what-has-worked-for-years dept.

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.

3 of 40 comments (clear)

  1. Re:just a TODO in gnome... by Lars+Arvestad · · Score: 3

    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
    __

    --
    Reality or nothing.
  2. Man pages and Info should not compete by Lars+Arvestad · · Score: 3

    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
    __

    --
    Reality or nothing.
  3. No! Never! by Matthew+Weigel · · Score: 3

    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:

    • There's no hyper-text linking! Not entirely true. Because references to other man pages are in a standard format, it is trivial to compute references... there are perl scripts out there that turn troff(1)-formatted man pages into HTML with useful links to other man pages reliably and easily. It wouldn't be difficult to forego HTML completely, and simply rewrite the man(1) program to handle these links. In fact, with a slight change to the manner in which references were made, you could even specify sections of other man pages easily, since the sections are standard.
    • Man pages don't give useful information! This is an amalgation of a few complaints, actually - that man pages only discuss commands and APIs, for instance, that they don't include examples, etc. This is not relevant to man pages, but certain operating systems' man pages. If you look at OpenBSD, there are man pages that discuss general issues involved in VPNs(8), IPSec(4), and even general introductory information (afterboot(8)). Man pages suit this sort of topic treatment reasonable well, and lead to more centralized documentation (a real win!).
    • You can't print good books from man pages! OK, true enough. Info, DocBook, etc. are well-suited for writing general books intended to teach. However, Trying to use Info or DocBook documents as references is unpleasant, and involves a lot of poking around for just the link. They essentially serve a completely different purpose.

    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