Re: General complaint about GNU's preference for "info" versus "man"

[Torsten Bronger]

Hallöchen!

Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> writes:

>> Date: Sat, 22 Apr 2006 11:44:12 +0200
>> From: Stepan Kasal <address@hidden>
>> 
>> Hello,
>> 
>> On Sat, Apr 22, 2006 at 10:52:27AM +0200, Torsten Bronger wrote:
>>
>>> Do you think of an additional meta-syntax for Texinfo source
>>> files, so that special tools can create man and --help out of
>>> it?
>> 
>> yes, something like that.  All three descriptions of each option
>> would be at the same place.
>
> Guys, you are reinventing the wheel: there is already a
> centralized place to describe all the advertised options: the
> Invocation node of the Texinfo manual.

That's right by and large, but it's not that simple in my opinion.
The structure of a Texinfo file is not as strict as that of a
manpage.  Some Info documents don't have an Invocation node, or it
is buried as a subnode.

Although I love Info, I always call man when I need quick
information.  Apparently I'm not the only one.  Thus, I think that
its approach has its merits.  It is very awkward to maintain both
doc systems for a certain program, so this is not a good solution.

Maybe one could add man's strength to Info?  I'm not competent in
Info's internals, but perhaps makeinfo could compile a meta node
that comprises by and large a manpage, and a special info invocation
like "qinfo myprogram" displays it.  Alternatively, Info itself
could do that on the fly.  (This would work only with Texinfo files
with certain standard nodes one has to agree upon before, of
course.)

Tschö,
Torsten.

-- 
Torsten Bronger, aquisgrana, europa vetus            ICQ 264-296-646