I'd like to add support to this proposal.
Matt Zimmerman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
It's convention that README.Debian is the place that the user should have
looked first (even if they don't have problems), and it might be good for it
to be more visible.
Absolutely.
In my experience README.Debian needs greater visibility. Often there is
critical information documented in README.Debian that isn't covered in
the man page, and only rarely does the man page reference README.Debian.
It is assumed that all users habitually check README.Debian just as they
would man pages, but I don't think this is the case. It was a while
after I started using Debian before I became aware of the value of the
supplemental documentation in /usr/share/doc/<package>.
Brian Nelson wrote:
I think it would be best to be displayed after the package has been
fully installed.
Valid point. Doesn't apt support post-install hooks? This may be an
argument for implementing this functionality in a tool separate from
apt-listchanges.
Ari Pollak <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
What about when there's a useful upstream README instead of a
README.Debian?
Another take on this is that the tool would display the files in
/usr/share/doc/<package> (perhaps after some filtering, such as README*)
as a numbered list, and prompt so the user could conveniently view any
of the files.
So given:
/usr/share/doc/postfix:
README.Debian changelog.gz
changelog.Debian.gz copyright
You'd see:
1. README.Debian
2. changelog.Debian
3. changelog
Show documentation for postfix? [type number or (q)uit]
Here we see "copyright" filtered out of the list, the compression
extensions dropped, and the tool would internally take care of using
zcat, if needed, before invoking the pager.
Such a tool could end up being useful outside of apt for novices, as a
documentation browser. Instead of 'man app' you'd do something like
'debdoc package'.
-Tom
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