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What does info add over plain old manual pages? I honestly don't really know, since I usually forget that info even exists. I feel like the effort the GNU proj
by chousuke 5y ago
What does info add over plain old manual pages? I honestly don't really know, since I usually forget that info even exists.
I feel like the effort the GNU project put into creating a competing standard for documentation would have been better spent improving the tooling around the standard man page mechanisms instead.
- alex_smart 5y ago>What does info add over plain old manual pages? I feel like info pages are more suitable for explaining the features of larger pieces of software. Can you imagine what a mess the man page for emacs would be, if it were to try to explain all its functionality? Instead the man page of emacs only gives a brief description of the software and explains the command line options and all the functionality is explained in an info document. I think of info as an alternative to /usr/share/doc, not man pages. The most import features of info that are missing from man: 1. pagination 2. cross-referencing 3. structure
- dredmorbius 5y agoThere is some truly great info-based documentation. The GNU AWK User Guide comes to mind: https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/gawk.html https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/gawk.html There's alot of information in there that is not in the manpage. (I'm painfully aware of this as I tend to rely mostly on the manpage, and learn things every time (which is rare) I read the GNU docs.) At the same time, the info interface and navigation remain completely opaque and nonintuitive to me.