Man Page Usage Debate

[crade]

I already have a woman for that! I need a man to tell me how to do it!

 

[God Ginrai]

I already have a woman for that! I need a man to tell me how to do it!

-God Ginrai

 

[paulguy]

I often use the terminal and quite often use man pages for pretty specific switches ( -lavcopts... D: ) and would like the option available if I needed it. But don't see it as something that should be included by default.

I'm for the PND package with the man pages for all the pre-installed stuff, with some kind of browser or prompt (include apropos or some other search tool, as well.). Allows people to download them and use them, but keeps it off the NAND so they don't have to worry about having enough space.

 

[VRAndy]

Two random comments :

• Don't some GNU tools recommend some other tool that is somehow more idealistically compatible with GNU fanatics, and therefore have pretty pitiful man pages?
• Gayest Linux Command Ever : man mount (Unless you're female, then perhaps it is the sexiest command ever?)

 

[relliker]

Working with Unix and Linux since 1993 (*nix) and 2002 (*nux) and my memory is as good as "Finding Nemo"'s friend Dory. Couldn't have survived this long without the man pages on each of the machines I work on. My Pandora must/will have manpages. If they're not provided I'll learn to 'PND' and make'em myself if necessary. I can't live/work without them My memory is THAT bad when it comes to commands with 10 or more possible options/arguments following them or a single command that can span two lines or more if you use the longer -- versions instead of the single letter args.

 

[sebt3]

• Gayest Linux Command Ever : man mount (Unless you're female, then perhaps it is the sexiest command ever?)

Have you ever tried man woman ?

 

[God Ginrai]

• Don't some GNU tools recommend some other tool that is somehow more idealistically compatible with GNU fanatics, and therefore have pretty pitiful man pages?

Yes, but info is much crappier to navigate through.

-God Ginrai

 

[VRAndy]

Working with Unix and Linux since 1993 (*nix) and 2002 (*nux) and my memory is as good as "Finding Nemo"'s friend Dory. Couldn't have survived this long without the man pages on each of the machines I work on. My Pandora must/will have manpages. If they're not provided I'll learn to 'PND' and make'em myself if necessary. I can't live/work without them My memory is THAT bad when it comes to commands with 10 or more possible options/arguments following them or a single command that can span two lines or more if you use the longer -- versions instead of the single letter args.

It would certainly be handy to have a PND file that gives us a "man files content pack" including all the man files that go with the utilities that came with the Pandora. I'd download that.

 

[wdt]

If you have a linux box man mplayer
A lot of pages, hard to puzzle out, but at least possible
But, if loop devices don't run out the man on pnd would save 14M
Hardly worth it
dave

 

[apink]

A lot. I know it inside out.

Use it every day: yes.

Know it inside out: I wish.

 

[tsh]

I'm wondering what sort of work some of you guys plan on doing whilst being 'not connected' that needs so much reference. if you think you need man pages, try looking at the --help info, I usually find that is sufficient (man pages in my experience have too much or too little info, and paging through them on a small screen is painful)

 

[yannv]

Typical examples of commands where the man page is sometimes necessary include mount, sed, awk, grep and iptables. make is a great example of where it isn't enough; the makefile format is described only in the info file. By the way, every info reader I've found also reads man pages. I'm pretty sure we're going to want a hypertext reader of some form anyhow, so the main value adds we could do are the search engine (as man -k), otherwise we could have roff/info to html translators, like konqueror uses. Of course, everyone will have their own set of what documents are needed. Not every system has or needs a full dwww style toolchain, and a compact device like this is exactly the place for compromises (although it has much more space than my early Linux boxen). Packages like info2www (a perl script) and man2html could be less space demanding than an info reader and groff, at the expense of a less familiar interface. Adding only those would support the formats, but may also be too much.
I for one would sacrifice both man and info to get make and cc, but I'll tack them on with my SD if I have to.

 

[lulzfish]

Hey, it's something I have an opinion on!

I use the terminal all the time*, but reading documentation in white-on-black 24 lines at a time is a bitch, so I always end up using online documentation.
Man pages suck. They need to be in HTML or something, then you could use a GUI browser as a luxury and fall back on Lynx.

Someone should do that. I bet they have. It should be easy to automate.

* Sometimes. I don't know much bash, like I had to look up for-loops, but I use it for SSH and compiling and everything on my server, since remote X11 is painfully slow.

 

[God Ginrai]

I use the terminal all the time*, but reading documentation in white-on-black 24 lines at a time is a bitch, so I always end up using online documentation.

Change the style settings for your terminal, then.

Man pages suck.

Why? You may complain about not having a GUI or HTML method, but yannv posted 6 hours before you with a solution to that. Also man pages load very quickly and can be quickly paged through, which is a lot easier than having to pull up a browser to read them. Not to mention, most things you need man for are utilities you are using in the terminal, so it makes perfect sense to have a utility that can tell you how to use them, from a terminal, practically instantly.

-God Ginrai

 

[cosurgi]

~$ man woman
No manual entry for woman

meh.

 

[yannv]

Curiously, not even funny-manpages included that page. It does have date, grope, condom, sex, baby and celibacy.

 

[JayFoxRox]

My terminal is mapped as followed:
...

Ah true, didn't even think about tabs in the terminal itself. However, I actually meant non-X terminals.

 

[SomeGuy99]

~$ man woman
No manual entry for woman

meh.

I think that's the joke.

 

[mali]

I think that's the joke.

Spoiler

 

[mitosis]

AAH screw it... I had a bunch to say but I haven't slept recently enough to say it nicely... and you know what they say about not having anything nice to say... so I'm just gonna take their advice and say nothing.

Mr. Ginari here said it all so much nicer, so I'll just ditto him with a plus ten thousand and some boldings.

*stuff about html, GUIs, and browsers*

Why? You may complain about not having a GUI or HTML method, but yannv posted 6 hours before you with a solution to that. Also man pages load very quickly and can be quickly paged through, which is a lot easier than having to pull up a browser to read them. Not to mention, most things you need man for are utilities you are using in the terminal, so it makes perfect sense to have a utility that can tell you how to use them, from a terminal, practically instantly.

-God Ginrai

See... what it basically boils down to is that you have your preference and I have mine. You prefer GUI based and HTML, I prefer the CLI solution and plaintext. We both have our reasoning and that's fine.

What I don't get is the relevancy of your point... and by "you" I mean everyone who keeps suggesting alternate VIEWERS for the man pages... the question was "man pages or no man pages?" not "how do you prefer to read your man pages?" so I'm gonna interpret your desire for an alternate way to read your man pages as a "yes I do use and want man pages but I won't be using the man command from the terminal to do my reading" ...and that's just fine.

I'm wondering what sort of work some of you guys plan on doing whilst being 'not connected' that needs so much reference.

Everything. I'm wondering why you need to "be connected" so compulsively? If I'm not downloading something or browsing the web I see wifi as a waste of battery power in a portable device such as this. So thus even if I AM around internet I likely won't be connected. Plus, as I said before, my primary usage model for the Pandora is on the go, where I won't have internet.

You're kinda wording it in a tail-wagging-the-dog way. It's NOT that I've got "work do to whilst not connected that needs so much reference" but rather "if I need reference, I'm not gonna be connected" ...get it? Because if I'm using my Pandora then I'm gonna be AWAY... and if I need reference on my Pandora that would mean I'm using my Pandora... and since I'll be using my Pandora while away from the home, I won't be connected. Could I make it any clearer?

if you think you need man pages, try looking at the --help info, I usually find that is sufficient (man pages in my experience have too much or too little info, and paging through them on a small screen is painful)

So --help magically makes text easier to read on a small screen? Hmm... I didn't know that, I wonder what kinda voodoo they use to make the latin symbols generated by --help so much easier to see than the ones generated by the man command.

--help in my experience has too much or too little info, and the scrollback it takes up is painful. (get it? ...cause with man you hit q and it all disappears, not wasting any lines of scrollback like --help does)

OOHKAAYYY MAHTOWSEHS... TIAM FUR BED, JOOS GETTEN ARNUHREE.

...my apologies for the jackass within, he can be a little overpowering when I'm low on energy.