Joerg Dietze wrote:
>Hi folks,
>
>On Sat, 16 Jun 2001 17:38:02 -0400, Glenn McCorkle wrote:
>
>> In what other OS can the user simply type (at the CLI).....
>
>> man last
>> man ls
>> man lilo
>> man whatever
>
>> and get the manual pages for that command or program??? ;-)
>
>>if You have a newer DOS version, like OpenDOS 7 or so try entering "help
copy" :-).
Try (in that newer DOS version)
"help nc" (for Norton Commander)
"help pine" (for Pine)
"help lynx" (for Lynx)
Would you get anything?
Traditionally, in Linux every application has its own man page, at least as a
starting point for the path towards finding the more extended doc files. In
many cases the man page comprises the complete documentation
The structure and formatting of the man pages are standard.
Arachne has its own man page, too:
<quote>
ARACHNE(1) User friendly applications ARACHNE(1)
NAME
arachne - fullscreen graphical WWW browser
SYNOPSIS
arachne [switch] | [path or URL]
DESCRIPTION
Arachne allows fullscreen browsing of World Wide Web, in
graphical mode. It does not require X window system to
run. Two different versions exist, first one based on
SVGAlib (libvga and libvgagl) and second on GGI (libggi).
GGI can use various targets to display graphics, including
X11 and framebuffer device. ...
<snip>
<end quote>
Man pages hold an unofficial record regarding the information density per
square inch.;-) This is the reason some people regard them as being rather
unfriendly. There are ways of producing more elaborate documentation such as
the info pages, docbook, postscript etc, but today HTML pages tend to be the
new standard.
Cristian Burneci
