>>>>> "IS" == Ingo Schwarze <schwa...@usta.de> writes:
JC>> I hope none of you are suggesting removing support for, eg:
JC>> man ./foo.5
IS> We will remove exactly that.
harm w/o value.
IS> In mandoc, i will remove that feature outright, probably later today,
i don't use mandoc often. but i doubt i'm the only one with this muscle
mmory.
IS> Colin, in man-db, if i understand correctly what he explained,
IS> wants to be less aggressive and is thinking about how to devise
IS> a method to deprecate it and slowly phase it out in a way that
IS> minimizes disruption for users and scripts, because he suspects
IS> that it *might* be used in a few places that need to adapt.
JC>> at least on all of the FLO-licensed posix varieties.
obviously i wrote the word posix as an abbreviation for unix and its
derivatives. whatever the austin group has published is not relevant.
decades of use, however, is relevant.
IS> What's wrong with typing
IS> man -l foo.5
having to run man man to remember it.
whereas specifying a path is the norm.
IS> Even when reading "standard" in the weak sense of "universally
IS> supported", your claim is dubious at best. While it appears
IS> that man-db supported the quirk since the beginning of the git
IS> repo in 2001 and man-1.5 / man-1.6 also supported it during the
IS> time frame 1998-2010, BSD man(1) never supported it, and mandoc
IS> only added it in 2018, and only for man-db compatibility.
i haven't used a bsd box as my primary since before that. but i've used
man $path since the 90s.
not every month.
but the other likely to recall option is calling grog to see what groff
options are required and then a suitable pipe chain.
to remember -l given how infrequently it is required and given the
extant muscle memory is unlikely.
and there is never value in eliminating something which has been around
for decades and is effortless to maintain.
i can't be the only one who is used to the current support. on any
kernel or dist.
the discussion ought to be much more widespread before changes are made.
-JimC
--
James Cloos <cl...@jhcloos.com>
OpenPGP: https://jhcloos.com/0x997A9F17ED7DAEA6.asc
