Re: generated manpages

[josX]

>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.

What about merging some data from the info-docs into the help2man
page via copy-paste. Yes that is by hand, but the most importand manpages
are those of fileutils so if you restrict yourself to that, it should 
limit the initial workload, and since those programs rarely change 
at all, it seems to be worth it to me.
People new to Unix are more likely to use man than they are to use
info. (?)

>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.