Jason Chu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > A lot of people have been asking about this over the years. If there's a > way to keep info pages but nothing else, I'd entertain the idea (though > realize that I don't ultimately make the decision). I do consider info > pages similar to man pages, in that the information contained is really > fairly important.
man pages for gcc are idiotic. The source for the info file is a .texi, which also produces a 300++ page book (and .info, .pdf, .html, etc. from the *one* source). It's easier to navigate the .info than read the book (it really doesn't seem that big!!), though the controls for the ancient info reader seem pretty poor now that web browsers have been invented and everyone's used to them. It's possible to reprogram the info reader to use ->, <-, <enter>, etc. but I haven't bothered yet. More useful might be to enhance lynx to read info files. The nice thing about man pages is they have a defined format, which isn't true for info files. And they are short. So if the info guys decide to write a book, that's great (and necessary for things like gcc, make and even cvs), but then IMHO they should supply a short man page with the key commands, and a reference to the info file. Besides being standardized, the man command supports the boldface and color in the formatted man pages, which the info reader does not do, so man pages can look really nice. (See OpenBSD for beautiful man pages.) These issues are fixable, if everyone wasn't so stubborn. One of the first things rms did was to set up texinfo, building on Knuth's TeX, so he could document all his code, which was big stuff like emacs, make, gdb, and gcc. But it's clear that info doesn't work as well for the short unix commands because the info reader doesn't format the man pages nicely. It could be enhanced to do this, and even to include links to the other commands in the "SEE ALSO" section, etc. > I'd also want a patch for makepkg to actually support it. =================== [EMAIL PROTECTED] src]# diff -u /usr/bin/makepkg /usr/local/bin/makepkg --- /usr/bin/makepkg 2005-01-11 18:01:28.000000000 -0500 +++ /usr/local/bin/makepkg 2005-04-01 17:36:45.000000000 -0500 @@ -562,8 +562,8 @@ # remove info/doc files cd $startdir -rm -rf pkg/usr/info pkg/usr/share/info -rm -rf pkg/usr/doc pkg/usr/share/doc +#rm -rf pkg/usr/info pkg/usr/share/info +#rm -rf pkg/usr/doc pkg/usr/share/doc # move /usr/share/man files to /usr/man if [ -d pkg/usr/share/man ]; then ==================== :-) But to do it right you need to add post_installs to the various packages to add the entry into the info directory 'dir'. Along the lines of: # cd /usr/info # install-info gcc.info dir -- KBK _______________________________________________ arch mailing list [email protected] http://www.archlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/arch
