On Tue, May 25, 1999 at 12:14:15AM +0200, Mark Kettenis wrote: > > IMHO, we really should not waste time on man pages.
Of course I am siiting between two chairs here (as I am a Debian developer, I am bound to Debian policy. As I am a Hurd developer, I am bound to GNU policy). I hope everyone understands my complicate situation. > It is better to > work on proper documentation instead, extending the current Hurd > texinfo manual. Having some information in man pages and other > information in the manual is confusing. What will happen is that at a > certain point the manual pages will even contradict what's in the > manual. Of course you are right. > Note that some of the newer GNU packages have a Perl script that > creates man pages from --help and --version output. Take a look at > ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/fetish/fileutils-4.0i.tar.gz for an example. > IMHO this is would be the best solution for creating man pages for > Hurd programs. This would be good enough. To explain: we can follow the letter if not the spirit of Debian policy by opening a bug report abour missing man pages and adding links for the man pages missing to the "undocumented" man page. This would be sufficient. A dummy web page with only synopsis information would be even better. It should refer to the info documentation, and all real work should be put there. Please understand that I can't say that no man pages at all are a good idea. My personal preferences have little place here, because I also represent Debian to some extent here. What you said Mark is a very good (IMHO an excellent) compromise. Thanks, Marcus -- `Rhubarb is no Egyptian god.' Debian http://www.debian.org finger brinkmd@ Marcus Brinkmann GNU http://www.gnu.org master.debian.org [EMAIL PROTECTED] for public PGP Key http://homepage.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/Marcus.Brinkmann/ PGP Key ID 36E7CD09
