4 ms·
This made me remember something I haven't thought about in a long time: info (i.e. TexInfo) is great, but back in the 90s, there was a push in the GNU world to
by anyfoo 5y ago
This made me remember something I haven't thought about in a long time:
info (i.e. TexInfo) is great, but back in the 90s, there was a push in the GNU world to move from man pages to info entirely. Annoyingly, during that time lots of GNU man pages would tell you to look at its info pages instead.
Me, and apparently others, were not thrilled. While info is technically superior, the "one page" format of a man page, at least to me, felt quicker and more convenient for quickly looking up something than info's hypertext. info might be better for dedicated reading of documentation (and I like using it in emacs for that), but perceived as less so when you quickly, say, want to look up a flag for ls.
This might be for complicated human reasons or even just habit... e.g. you can still do full text search in info pages across all subpages, both with the "info" command and in emacs' info mode: just hit the 's' key.
I'm not sure what the state today is, I can't remember when I was last pointed to info instead of man (and I think I dimly remember some announcement that this would stop). But I also largely moved more towards BSD derivates rather than Linux, so I can't be sure.
- dmortin 5y ago> info might be better for dedicated reading of documentation (and I like using it in emacs for that), but perceived as less so when you quickly, say, want to look up a flag for ls. You can search and navigate with info very efficiently. In your case searching for 'flags' should quickly show the relevant info.
- anyfoo 5y agoYeah, I also mentioned how I wasn't sure how well founded that argument is. On the other hand, especially for man pages that are not huge, you can get a good grasp and overview by just scrolling linearly through the man page. At least for me, who tends to think very visually, I then have the impression I got a better feeling for the structure and covered content of the document than if it was hierarchical. (Again, this breaks down once the document gets too large.) Overall, that annoyed "oh gosh, I just wanted a quick scroll through the man page" feeling when encountering a man page that was just a stub for the info document probably comes from somewhere after all.
- taeric 5y agoThis is hilarious in modern context. So much documentation is effectively "what stack overflow has" that worrying about "man versus info" feels like a distraction.
- aulin 5y agoI'd say a bit sad more than hilarious, sad for modern times I mean... you have an easily accessible, curated, well-thought and organized doc base where you could learn a lot more other than solving your little problem at hand, but you still resort to subpar answers on a qa website
- cion 5y agoBut somebody has to write those Stackoverflow answers. Perhaps for those who do the distinction between man pages and info is important. Or do you think that the source of Stackoverflow answers is just more Stackoverflow answers? Now that would be hilarious.
- krylon 5y agoI wouldn't even mind GNU documentation moving to TexInfo, but I have repeatedly found man pages telling me to invoke "info <some-command>" only to then find there was no texinfo documentation for that command. It's not a huge problem, but every now and then, it's annoying.