From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: lyndon@orthanc.ca (Lyndon Nerenberg (VE6BBM/VE7TFX))
Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2011 10:56:19 -0800
Subject: [9fans] info bashing
In-Reply-To: <AANLkTimVzRkFbF4T8pcWiA9RA=ENUVGB6a3==z8nord5@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <859eafd17bd9a037fb5c4a18ae3675fb@gandalf.orthanc.ca>
Topicbox-Message-UUID: c0dd8e80-ead6-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025

> My theory is that GNU tools were so bloated by design that they
> realized that they  couldn't write a decent man page for their tools
> so they invented the  info pages and the --help flag.

In fairness to info, you have to consider its history.  The want was
to be able to present an online edition of some large documents (the
emacs documentation), with cross-references, search capabilities,
index lookups, etc.  This was long before the web was even a glimmer
in anyone's eye.  In that regard, it was a spectacular success.  Being
able to jump around a 400+page document in real time on a VT100
plugged into a Sun 3/50 workstation is a testament to that.

The standalone implementation suffers from being keystroke compatible
with the emacs lisp implementation.  Those of us who grep up on emacs
can find our way around.  For anyone else, I can't imagine how they 
manage to use it.

But as others have said, treating info as a replacement for man pages
is arrogance beyond any rational description.  Then again, the quality
of documentation for most GNU software matches that of the code.

--lyndon