François Pinard wrote:
[Dave Howorth]
there are lots of websites that contain HTML-formatted man pages. Are
there any sites that have HTML-formatted info pages (preferably all
pages for one app on one HTML page :) ?
Yes. Info pages are one by-product of Texinfo format, which also can
produce laser-printable manuals, and HTML pages. At the very beginning,
some people were writing Info pages directly, but it did not last. The
proper way is writing Texinfo, and deriving Info out of it.
In the tool generating HTML out of Texinfo, there are options for
selecting one bulky HTML page, instead of one HTML per node. I see two
reasons for why one would want one bulky page (I'm curious to know if
there are other reasons): either because HTML browsers cannot
conveniently search at once through a bunch of related pages, or else to
print a manual in a single browser print request.
My primary reason is that I DO NOT WANT TO SPEND MY TIME
NAVIGATING FROM NODE TO NODE trying to find where in the
hell the particular documentation for a command has been
hidden by the not-as-clever-as-they-think-themselves-to-be
guys at FSF.
Their programs are good.
Their documentation format sucks.
I would think the above reasons come with HTML format. I remember that
"info" knows to search through all nodes (a bit like Vim knows how to
search in all its documentation). For printing a manual, the Texinfo to
DVI route produces a much nicer manual than the HTML browser route.
I have no interest in printing out a manual. On the other
hand, say when I'm using chmod(3) for some of its more
esoteric purposes, I do have a very high interest in being
able to find the relevant section of the documentation
quickly, without being forced to hunt around for several
minutes like a blind man in a maze.
It's just fucking stupid.
Other than that, gnu software is great.
(And I find it very interesting that the man page for
GCC is complete, without snide references to see the
info page for the complete documentation.)
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