Hi,
Greg Wooledge wrote:
> That's in the info(1) tool. I agree, info has a better search ability
> than pinfo(1).
Oops. I did not make the connection from your final statement to your
mentioning of pinfo. (I could make excuses that you mention "info and pinfo"
on the way to the end. But actually i did not make a connection to that
either.)
> Let's take date as an example, and let's say that we want to know what
> the %F does, because we saw someone use it.
> In the man page, which has everything all together, it's simple:
> unicorn:~$ man date | grep %F
> %F full date; like %+4Y-%m-%d
At least in this case, pinfo might not be a sincere contender. I read that
it aims to be like the web browser "lynx".
info is more rugged in respect to traditional shell use. As you already
demonstrated it would work fine with grep.
Paradoxly, i would blame the highly condensed information in "man date"
on the fact that man pages in many GNU packages are more or less formatted
versions of the program's help text:
$ date --help | grep %F
%F full date; same as %Y-%m-%d
> unicorn:~$ info date | less
Don't tell this Richard Stallman. :))
Whatever, neither info document nor man page really serve the needs of users
who want to learn how to use a program. At best they can give an introduction
of concepts and list all invocation details. This serves those who already
have a good idea of what they are looking for. Examples can help.
When i feel clueless then i ask the all-knowing seer g*.com in plain english.
It yields lots of rumors but in most cases it gives me better ideas what to
look for.
(Please don't tell this Richard Stallman either ...)
Have a nice day :)
Thomas
