Re: [9front] Argument lists in Plan 9 man pages

["Ethan A. Gardener" <eekee57@fastmail.fm>]

Seeing as this appears to be a thread for declaring opinion 
along with an intent to do nothing, I may as well weigh in. ;)

On Thu, Mar 15, 2018, at 2:57 AM, sl@stanleylieber.com wrote:
> 
> The argument against my point of view is that the man pages are
> supposed to be kept short enough, and programs should have few enough
> flag options, that it never becomes a problem wading through tens of
> paragraphs to locate the flag option you're looking for.

I formerly held to this opinion, with the exception that I never even tried 
wading through more than 4 or 5 paragraphs at most. I have to admit 
that even 2 paragraphs of verbiage around the options could be really 
annoying at times.

I use the word "verbiage" because it sounds like "foliage", which in this 
context reminds me of attempting to proceed through jungle undergrowth. 

> Parsing the big paragraphs for flag options is
> cognitively disruptive and prone to error

Exactly. 

I implied I'll do nothing at the top, but that may turn out to be false. I really 
got back into programming in the last few weeks, but once I really got going 
I found it somewhat addictive. There's always another fascinating puzzle to 
solve, and I don't want to stop. Then, of course, it takes my energy away 
from everything else. I decided to limit programming to one day a week, 
but I need something lighter to fill the rest of my time. 
I've got a few other things to write at the moment, but when they're done, 
maybe I'll have a go at man pages.


-- 
The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne. -- Chaucer