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I use info extensively for the GNU projects. As a user. The thing is—GNU is right here, that info is better. You can run info from the command-line just like m

I use info extensively for the GNU projects. As a user. The thing is—GNU is right here, that info is better. You can run info from the command-line just like man, except info pages are hierarchical, indexed, and have links. The same sources can then be used to generate web pages. You then have one set of docs you update, which are accessible both from the web and from the terminal. The system can handle large projects and it’s easy to navigate—much easier than man. It’s beautiful. Man, by comparison, gives you individual pages. I think that’s great when you need to stare at the docs for an individual API call for a while, like when you read “man mmap” or something, but it sucks for large projects. You can convert man pages to web pages but it’s not competitive with info. Try running “info gcc” or “info make” at some point and you’ll see something beautiful. You can browse linearly using space/backspace, and Q to quit. You can do a text search across the whole manual, you can follow links, etc. I find this system good enough that when it’s available, I don’t use the web browser to look up docs for stuff like GCC or Make.

hpfr 3y ago
And much like “man man”, “info info” is a good place to start :)
- metabagel 3y ago
  For me, it’s not “sticky”. I end up forgetting how to use it. I never forget how to “man”.
  - Cockbrand 3y ago
    This. One uses less all the time for displaying text files anyway, so the commands are in muscle memory. Using info is always similar to accidentally launching vi and not knowing how to get around or even out of it. (I’ve learned vim in the meantime, but just avoided info for the last 10+ years)
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
pavon 3y ago
And it's not like GNU is unique in having other documentation beyond man pages. Most FLOSS projects these days use man as a simple summary of command-line arguments, and have the rest of their documentation in HTML. The BSD folks are the only ones that have stuck to their guns of using man as the primary source of documentation. GNU man pages also helpfully tell you that more documentation is available in info format, which something many other projects don't do.
gavinhoward 3y ago
Oh, wow...TIL. Thank you. I guess I'm one of today's lucky 10,000. [1] I'm tempted to make my tools do something similar. On Windows too. [1]: https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/
jandrese 3y ago
I’ve always struggled with the search command in info. Hitting / and the keyword then tapping next in man is easy. Info’s search always gets me tangled up, probably because I don’t use it enough to remember the keybinds.
- klodolph 3y ago
  The search in info is way better than the search in man. Check out info info for the docs. Ctrl-S starts an I-search, instead of /. You then start typing what you want to search for. The results immediately appear; you don’t have to press enter. This will search across the docs for an entire project—with man, you may have to dig around with apropos first to find what you are looking for. You can then hit Ctrl-S again to go to the next search occurrence, hit enter to stay where you are and exit the search, or Ctrl-G to exit the search and go back to where you started.
  - photonbeam 3y ago
    I think the core problem is that it’s not /, which many have muscle memory for
    - klodolph 3y ago
      You can still use / if you like.
  - btilly 3y ago
    Yes, if you like emacs, then I'm sure it is fine. That's a big if. And I'm not going to learn to navigate an emacs system for a few utilities that I don't use much when everything that I do care about is on man.
    - klodolph 3y ago
      Sure, content is king, as they say. If you spend all your time using tools/libraries/APIs with good man pages, then use man. If you spend your time using GCC, Make, Bison, etc., then you’d be better off learning info. You’d equally not learn how to navigate Javadoc if you don’t write Java code. Seems pretty obvious to me. I get that info is a little easier if you are used to Emacs keybindings. But if you use info, you’d mostly just use space / backspace, ctrl-s for search, m for menu, and u for up. It’s not a lot of keybindings that you’re probably going to end up using. Yeah, info has M-x, but who ever uses it? Everyone who used man for the first time had to learn those keybindings too.
metabagel 3y ago
I always had a hard time remembering how to navigate info pages.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
hulitu 3y ago
> The thing is—GNU is right here, that info is better. My experience was, with 1 or 2 exceptions, that the info was the same as the manpage. And navigating info pages is "challenging".
- fiddlerwoaroof 3y ago
  This usually means you haven’t installed the info pages: info falls back to manpages if it can’t find an info-native page. Typically, on Debian or similar, you have to install foo-doc to get the info pages if `foo` doesn’t install them. E.g. I’m fairly sure the zsh package lacks the very good zsh info pages, which are included in zsh-doc.
jasonjayr 3y ago
Way back when, the emacs-ish interface that info uses by default was very jarring, especially since I had been using vim forever. `pinfo` was a browser that supported browsing like elinks, and the keybindings were similar enough that I could effectively navigate it when needed. However, IMHO, as nice and organized as the info pages were, every modern console I found myself using, when in the terminal, when I needed to use man or info, I really just wanted a a summary of all the command line options, that I could grep on, in one big list. info pages tended to offer logical subsections, that required more interaction + more careful reading to get to the piece of info you were after, which ended up using more time to plow through to a solution.
- klodolph 3y ago
  IMO, if you’re just interested in grepping through options, info is better at that, compared to man. I feel like I’m fighting against man when I look at the man page for SoX or rsync. I find some --option listed in the option list, but I want to see more details about how it works—but when I grep for --option, I have to scroll past 20 or 30 references to --option like, “--something is similar to --option except X, Y, Z”. It’s a complete slog just looking up an option. In info, I can find this information a lot faster.
xlii 3y ago
I came here to support their decision too. I love info pages. I spent many hours trying to convert documentation I use into info pages or something like info (but failed, as info has more metadata than those sources). Sure enough I’m using Emacs but navigating through any documentation in info form is a very positive experience, especially in comparison to a documentation in HTML form that has many issues (especially since interactivity for search etc. is inconsistent and likes to break)
bawolff 3y ago
> The thing is—GNU is right here, that info is better. GNU might not be unix, but alas worse is still better.
Brian_K_White 3y ago
What you say may be true, but never the less, when I first encountered it and tried it, I could not stand it. Just as a user not as an author. I've never looked at it since. I do like good old simple man pages as long as they aren't the stubs that just say "see the info". Maybe it was just the keybindings, maybe it was something about the screen layout and navigation hints (lack of maybe). I can't say precisely what was so wrong, and have no interest in even trying nor need to. If it was so great, no one would need to try to convince anyone of anything. I'd have just used it in prefference because it was better at getting the info I wanted to me.
cratermoon 3y ago
> info pages are hierarchical Hierarchies aren't All That. The case for hierarchies only makes sense when the ontology is familiar to the user[1]. Without knowing the info hierarchy it's impossible to navigate. Why, for example, are the gnupg info pages under 'GNU Utilities', wget under 'Network applications', and things like rm and mkdir under 'Individual utilities' (a long with dozens of other things)? 1. https://web.archive.org/web/20070119210402/http://www.shirky.com/writings/ontology_overrated.html https://web.archive.org/web/20070119210402/http://www.shirky...
- klodolph 3y ago
  The hierarchy within the info page is where it’s useful. You don’t look for gnupg by going into GNU Utilities, you go to gnupg by typing "info gnupg". Within the gnupg manual you can look at a section like “key management commands” or something like that. There are a lot of different commands in gnupg, it’s nice to have a separate page for each, and be able to browse. By comparison, the OpenSSL docs are man pages, and it kinda sucks to browse the OpenSSL docs. (I’m gonna say, categorically, that both OpenSSL and GnuPG have bad UX. It kinda sucks to figure out what you’re doing in either case, but at least the GnuPG manual is easier to read.)

hpfr 3y ago

And much like “man man”, “info info” is a good place to start :)

metabagel 3y ago
For me, it’s not “sticky”. I end up forgetting how to use it. I never forget how to “man”.
- Cockbrand 3y ago
  This. One uses less all the time for displaying text files anyway, so the commands are in muscle memory. Using info is always similar to accidentally launching vi and not knowing how to get around or even out of it. (I’ve learned vim in the meantime, but just avoided info for the last 10+ years)
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

pavon 3y ago

And it's not like GNU is unique in having other documentation beyond man pages. Most FLOSS projects these days use man as a simple summary of command-line arguments, and have the rest of their documentation in HTML. The BSD folks are the only ones that have stuck to their guns of using man as the primary source of documentation. GNU man pages also helpfully tell you that more documentation is available in info format, which something many other projects don't do.

gavinhoward 3y ago

Oh, wow...TIL. Thank you. I guess I'm one of today's lucky 10,000. [1] I'm tempted to make my tools do something similar. On Windows too. [1]: https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/

jandrese 3y ago

I’ve always struggled with the search command in info. Hitting / and the keyword then tapping next in man is easy. Info’s search always gets me tangled up, probably because I don’t use it enough to remember the keybinds.

klodolph 3y ago
The search in info is way better than the search in man. Check out info info for the docs. Ctrl-S starts an I-search, instead of /. You then start typing what you want to search for. The results immediately appear; you don’t have to press enter. This will search across the docs for an entire project—with man, you may have to dig around with apropos first to find what you are looking for. You can then hit Ctrl-S again to go to the next search occurrence, hit enter to stay where you are and exit the search, or Ctrl-G to exit the search and go back to where you started.
- photonbeam 3y ago
  I think the core problem is that it’s not /, which many have muscle memory for
  - klodolph 3y ago
    You can still use / if you like.
- btilly 3y ago
  Yes, if you like emacs, then I'm sure it is fine. That's a big if. And I'm not going to learn to navigate an emacs system for a few utilities that I don't use much when everything that I do care about is on man.
  - klodolph 3y ago
    Sure, content is king, as they say. If you spend all your time using tools/libraries/APIs with good man pages, then use man. If you spend your time using GCC, Make, Bison, etc., then you’d be better off learning info. You’d equally not learn how to navigate Javadoc if you don’t write Java code. Seems pretty obvious to me. I get that info is a little easier if you are used to Emacs keybindings. But if you use info, you’d mostly just use space / backspace, ctrl-s for search, m for menu, and u for up. It’s not a lot of keybindings that you’re probably going to end up using. Yeah, info has M-x, but who ever uses it? Everyone who used man for the first time had to learn those keybindings too.

metabagel 3y ago

I always had a hard time remembering how to navigate info pages.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

hulitu 3y ago

> The thing is—GNU is right here, that info is better. My experience was, with 1 or 2 exceptions, that the info was the same as the manpage. And navigating info pages is "challenging".

fiddlerwoaroof 3y ago
This usually means you haven’t installed the info pages: info falls back to manpages if it can’t find an info-native page. Typically, on Debian or similar, you have to install foo-doc to get the info pages if `foo` doesn’t install them. E.g. I’m fairly sure the zsh package lacks the very good zsh info pages, which are included in zsh-doc.

jasonjayr 3y ago

Way back when, the emacs-ish interface that info uses by default was very jarring, especially since I had been using vim forever. `pinfo` was a browser that supported browsing like elinks, and the keybindings were similar enough that I could effectively navigate it when needed. However, IMHO, as nice and organized as the info pages were, every modern console I found myself using, when in the terminal, when I needed to use man or info, I really just wanted a a summary of all the command line options, that I could grep on, in one big list. info pages tended to offer logical subsections, that required more interaction + more careful reading to get to the piece of info you were after, which ended up using more time to plow through to a solution.

klodolph 3y ago
IMO, if you’re just interested in grepping through options, info is better at that, compared to man. I feel like I’m fighting against man when I look at the man page for SoX or rsync. I find some --option listed in the option list, but I want to see more details about how it works—but when I grep for --option, I have to scroll past 20 or 30 references to --option like, “--something is similar to --option except X, Y, Z”. It’s a complete slog just looking up an option. In info, I can find this information a lot faster.

xlii 3y ago

I came here to support their decision too. I love info pages. I spent many hours trying to convert documentation I use into info pages or something like info (but failed, as info has more metadata than those sources). Sure enough I’m using Emacs but navigating through any documentation in info form is a very positive experience, especially in comparison to a documentation in HTML form that has many issues (especially since interactivity for search etc. is inconsistent and likes to break)

bawolff 3y ago

> The thing is—GNU is right here, that info is better. GNU might not be unix, but alas worse is still better.

Brian_K_White 3y ago

What you say may be true, but never the less, when I first encountered it and tried it, I could not stand it. Just as a user not as an author. I've never looked at it since. I do like good old simple man pages as long as they aren't the stubs that just say "see the info". Maybe it was just the keybindings, maybe it was something about the screen layout and navigation hints (lack of maybe). I can't say precisely what was so wrong, and have no interest in even trying nor need to. If it was so great, no one would need to try to convince anyone of anything. I'd have just used it in prefference because it was better at getting the info I wanted to me.

cratermoon 3y ago

> info pages are hierarchical Hierarchies aren't All That. The case for hierarchies only makes sense when the ontology is familiar to the user[1]. Without knowing the info hierarchy it's impossible to navigate. Why, for example, are the gnupg info pages under 'GNU Utilities', wget under 'Network applications', and things like rm and mkdir under 'Individual utilities' (a long with dozens of other things)? 1. https://web.archive.org/web/20070119210402/http://www.shirky.com/writings/ontology_overrated.html https://web.archive.org/web/20070119210402/http://www.shirky...

klodolph 3y ago
The hierarchy within the info page is where it’s useful. You don’t look for gnupg by going into GNU Utilities, you go to gnupg by typing "info gnupg". Within the gnupg manual you can look at a section like “key management commands” or something like that. There are a lot of different commands in gnupg, it’s nice to have a separate page for each, and be able to browse. By comparison, the OpenSSL docs are man pages, and it kinda sucks to browse the OpenSSL docs. (I’m gonna say, categorically, that both OpenSSL and GnuPG have bad UX. It kinda sucks to figure out what you’re doing in either case, but at least the GnuPG manual is easier to read.)