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Man pages are manuals. They list all possible ways of controlling the program. Have you seen the man page for curl? http://man.cx/curl http://man.cx/curl If w
by buro9 11y ago
Man pages are manuals.
They list all possible ways of controlling the program. Have you seen the man page for curl? http://man.cx/curl http://man.cx/curl
If we accept that man pages shouldn't be less than a manual, how then to deliver the top n recipes that demonstrate how the program can be used in the majority of cases?
In the case of curl, it's really just a GET, a JSON POST, a file upload... and perhaps add in an auth header or non-standard header.
Example: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/356705/how-to-send-a-header-using-a-http-request-through-a-curl-call http://stackoverflow.com/questions/356705/how-to-send-a-head...
458 people upvoted that question, 697 upvoted the answer, hundreds of duplicates of it point to it.
In a long man page, well-documented options might as well not exist.
You don't need the whole manual all the time, and when someone is busy getting something done they shouldn't be hit with a "Hey, why don't you learn all of this"... they just want to get something done.
- Tiksi 11y agoI mean I don't disagree with the idea behind what you said, but we do have search. You don't have to read the man pages like a book to get use out of them. I'm willing to bet this is quicker than finding the question on stackoverflow: http://paste.click/HrdrGW http://paste.click/HrdrGW And there's even an example.
- buro9 11y agoI'm not sure you understood. Man pages = reference tldr = recipes People learn and use tools different ways. I'm a reference person, it sounds like you are too. But there exists a lot of people who find references hard, but example driven stuff easy (whereas I find examples limiting, and references endlessly useful). Search for those people is difficult, as it's phrased by "this thing I want to do", and not "these keywords I already know". tldr isn't for you and I... it's for those who prefer recipes over references.
- Tiksi 11y agoLike I said, I don't disagree, and I can see the use people get from recipes. And yes, you're right that I'm a "if I need to google it more than 3 times, I'm reading the man pages" kind of person. However that stackoverflow answer is literally a copy and paste from the man pages, with an example (which the man pages I have also contains apparently). The information is the same, the method to search for it is different, but I'm willing to bet my way is faster ;) I don't see anything wrong with tldr, I would have definitely loved to have something like that in the past. I do think that completely ignoring the man pages is a mistake though, since it requires just as little if not less effort as looking it up on stackoverflow, which in this case has the same answer anyways.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]