Re: [TUHS] man Macro Package and pdfmark

[Jon Steinhart <jon@fourwinds.com>]

Thomas Paulsen writes:
> >*all* the stuff? Please don't do that literally. The garrulity
> >quotient of info pages dwarfs even that of the most excessive
> ;-)
> >modern man pages. But I appplaud the intent to assure man
> >pages are complete.
> info pages clearly are redundant. Even worser under linux most of them
> visualizing man pages, whereas hardly any man page is missing.
> They are emacs style help pages in the tradition of twenex/its, and I tell
> you that a few years ago one guy (not me) recommended in the emacs developer
> list to replace tekinfo by something modern like .html.
>
> Thus the question isn't man or tekinfo for linux documentation but html/markup
> or or tekinfo for emacs build-in self documentation.

I think that this discussion is like bell-bottoms, it comes around every few years.

Like Clem, I prefer concise man pages and longer, separate documents for those
programs where it makes sense.  I consider man pages to be quick references.

But my real issue with texinfo wouldn't get solved with html pages many of which
already exist.  The problem is that the ecosystem has been fragmented by people
doing their "documentation" in their preferred formats instead of in a common (man)
format.  This makes the experience one of "is there any documentation?" followed by
"what's the incantation to get it?"  When you're looking for the documentation for
pdf2svg, for example, and there is no man page, how long does it take to figure out
that there is no documentation at all?

Jon