Re: generated manpages

[Eli Zaretskii]

On Sun, 11 Feb 2001, josX wrote:

> The automatically generated manpages lack some readability.
> Isn't it possible to expand the "DISCRIPTION" section and be
> a bit more verbose when explaining options? 
> 
> Also: the policy of fasing out manpages(?) seems very wrong to me:
> the info-docs are very long and verbose, nice when you decide
> to really dive into a program but they don't void the job manpages
> do.

Did you try "info --usage" in Texinfo 4.0?  If not, perhaps you could try 
it and see if it could serve as a decent replacement for a man page.

For example, "info --usage info-standalone" should take you right to the 
"Invocation" node of the Info manual for the stand-alone Info reader.

> So, in short, I'm asking for a bit more quality in the help2man
> generated manpage area...  They (online-manpages) deserve it ;)

The problem is that someone needs to produce the text of the man 
page, and then to maintain it to be in sync with the program's 
functionality.  Formatting is never a problem; contents is.

help2man simply uses the output of --help, which is by definition short 
and somewhat cryptic (it should ideally take no more than one screen 
page).  --help is mostly in sync with the program's functionality.  
Anything else is a maintenance burden.