RE: [TCLUG:15481] Faeriedist

["Ben Lutgens" <blutgens@usinternet.com>]

Centrally locate the docs, and use a search engine like ht://dig or glimpse
to do it. I think man2html and info2html can all be reworked to generate
static html pages.

Ben Lutgens         651-623-6162
Sysadmin / IT Consultant
CS Solutions Inc

-----Original Message-----
From: Luke Francl [mailto:fran0382@tc.umn.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, April 04, 2000 3:35 PM
To: tclug-list@mn-linux.org
Subject: Re: [TCLUG:15481] Faeriedist

On Tue, 4 Apr 2000, Dave Sherohman wrote:

> As I read carls's comment, you've just missed the point...  _Everything_
> should be in man.  As a Debianite, one of mey pet peeves is all the man
pages
> that say, "This is just here as a courtesy.  If you want to know anything
> useful, check the info page instead."

Personally, I agree with you, but the man vs info issue is an interesting
one. info is nice because it's hypertext, which is _very_ helpfully for
documentations (how often to you find yourself starting and restarting man
sessions cross referencing documentation?). info pages provide
functionality that man pages never can. Also, if you are familiar with
Emacs, info pages allow you to interface with yet another part of your
computer via Emacs. If you notice who wrote all the man pages which say
"This man page is no longer maintained. Please read the info pages", they
are all from the FSF, the bigest proponents of Emacs. In their view, info
supercedes man.

However, as a non-Emacs-fanatic (read: mainly vi user), I find the info
browser annoying to use.

But I can still see the need of a hypertext system. What would be nice
would be a unified documentation browser system -- info, man, HOWTO --
which would work as a web browser (more like lynx than Emacs, barf). What
would be AMAZING would be to use a search engine and a database to
reformat the man pages to incorporate hyperlinks to all related documents,
and also be able to view info pages. The HOWTOs would be harder, but nice
to do as well.

Has anyone started/finished a system like that?

Luke


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