Re: Man pages missing

[Juergen Christoffel <Christoffel@gmd.de>]

   From: Zefram <zefram@dcs.warwick.ac.uk>
   Date: Fri, 31 Jan 1997 12:51:15 +0000 (GMT)

   >There's no need to print out a manual if you don't want to. Today a
   >hypertext approach would work for me due to tools like lynx (the vt100

   Actually lynx uses curses; it's not limited to vt100s.

Usually I use "vt100" as a synonym when I mean character-based
displays; I should have been more careful here. And I use curses too
sometimes, but they don't work as good today as they did in the dark
ages ;-)

   >based web browser, so you wouldn't need Netscape or its ilk) or Emacs'
   >info mode. For me it's much more effective to browse through a well
   >organized manual with lynx or emacs than it is to page through 60+
   >pages of man pages with less.

   For me, it's much more effective to have all the documentation in one
   place, and browse it with my preferred pager.  Hypertext just gets in
   the way of the information, and there still isn't a hypertext system
   that formats to look as good as man pages.  

Hmm, I don't see such a great difference between lynx output and man
output. 

					       (And have you ever tried to
   read `all the documentation' on some subject, when said documentation
   is arranged as an arbitrary directed graph of fifty nodes of two pages
   each?)

It's easy to run down a concept by giving worst case scenarios. But if
you re-read my message, you'll note that I said "well organized
manual" and it is possible to create a document which follows a rather
linear structure _and_ offers links for fast cross-references to other
parts of the documentation and a good index with links.

If you have a chance to take a look at a Macintosh where MacPerl is
installed, you might want to take a look at the fine integration
Matthias Neeracher did between MacPerl, the perl man pages and
browsers like Netscape or Matthias' own lightweight pod viewer Shuck.

Cheers, JC

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   GMD - German National Research Center for Information Technology

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