Re: [GTALUG] Man and Info Pages
On 2022-01-08 22:43, Howard Gibson via talk wrote:
... LaTeX, which has fantastic PDF support
I think we're seeing different problems. Mine was caused by a literal
U+03A9 ("Ω") somewhere in the document. The default LaTeX toolchain for
the particular project's Sphinx setup wasn't Unicode-aware. Only by
changing one config line from "pdflatex" to "xelatex" did the manual
compile.
I'm not professionally involved in typesetting any more, but the most
recent, most capable Unicode/multilingual typesetting system I've seen
is a version of troff. Neatroff - http://litcave.rudi.ir/ - handles
bidirectional typesetting and Opentype ligatures for scripts that use
different glyphs depending on their place in a word.
cheers,
Stewart
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Re: [GTALUG] Man and Info Pages
On Sat, 8 Jan 2022 20:39:42 -0500 "Stewart C. Russell via talk" wrote: > I recently spent time debugging why a major embedded > project never came with a PDF manual, despite their docs being managed > in Sphinx. It turns out that there's one instance of a Unicode omega / > Ohm symbol in their entire document base, and their Sphinx PDF rules > aren't Unicode-aware. That is a bit weird. My old linuxdoc SGML file won't compile for some reason. If I delete half the document, it compiles. If I delete the other half of the document it compiles. It appears to be length limited, so I have converted everything over LaTeX, which has fantastic PDF support, fairly good HTML support, and okay RTF support if I don't do any graphics. -- Howard Gibson hgib...@eol.ca jhowardgib...@gmail.com http://home.eol.ca/~hgibson --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [GTALUG] Man and Info Pages
On 2022-01-06 11:44 a.m., Scott Allen via talk wrote: On Thu, 6 Jan 2022 at 11:28, Giles Orr via talk wrote: I open a man page, I scroll - done. I opened the man page because I wanted to learn about the command whose man page I opened - I don't want to have to learn about 'info' before I can learn about any other command ... Well, you do have to learn about 'less' or whatever pager 'man' is using on your system (default or specified). However, I agree. I never liked using 'info', mostly for the same reasons you've given. I don't use info. I tried it in the early days but found it wasn't easy to use. I never got the hang of how to navigate around to find the information I wanted. On the other hand man shows me a single page that I can easily search for the information I need using a command key I use in vi. I rarely tried using info back in the day and it has been so long since I last tried to use it that I had pretty much forgotten all about it. My system has less as the pager which is part of what makes using man pages to get information about something nice and easy. -- Cheers! Kevin. http://www.ve3syb.ca/ | "Nerds make the shiny things that https://www.patreon.com/KevinCozens | distract the mouth-breathers, and | that's why we're powerful" Owner of Elecraft K2 #2172 | #include | --Chris Hardwick --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [GTALUG] Man and Info Pages
On 2022-01-08 8:39 p.m., Stewart C. Russell via talk wrote: At least its better than Microsoft, whose embedded docs are essentially just Bing searches. Man RTFM. ;-) --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [GTALUG] Man and Info Pages
info was only ever a Gnu thing, and there are as many people who'd do the opposite of what the FSF would say on principle. A major strike against info is its reliance on texinfo, its own weird markup language. texinfo also has dependencies that run into the gigabytes, since installing texinfo will also install TeX Live, the now-vast TeX system for Linux. tbh, I'm surprised that something better than man hasn't come along. But you can write manpages in anything (rst, markdown, LibreOffice ...) and have them converted to man pages via packages like pandoc — https://pandoc.org/ . But when you need PDF output, TeX is lurking in there somewhere. I recently spent time debugging why a major embedded project never came with a PDF manual, despite their docs being managed in Sphinx. It turns out that there's one instance of a Unicode omega / Ohm symbol in their entire document base, and their Sphinx PDF rules aren't Unicode-aware. At least its better than Microsoft, whose embedded docs are essentially just Bing searches. cheers, Stewart --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [GTALUG] Man and Info Pages
"It's complicated" 1. For linux, I'd refer to LPI wording about this. 2. for other l*Nixes, I'd consult their docs on their docs ( said in "Austin Powers introducing Austin Powers" voice ) I do like info, but my muscle memory makes me man all the time. --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [GTALUG] Man and Info Pages
On Thu, 6 Jan 2022 at 11:28, Giles Orr via talk wrote: > I open a man page, I scroll - done. I opened the > man page because I wanted to learn about the command whose man page I > opened - I don't want to have to learn about 'info' before I can learn > about any other command ... Well, you do have to learn about 'less' or whatever pager 'man' is using on your system (default or specified). However, I agree. I never liked using 'info', mostly for the same reasons you've given. -- Scott --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [GTALUG] Man and Info Pages
On Thu, 6 Jan 2022 at 02:28, Howard Gibson via talk wrote: > >I am updating my UNIX Command Line HOWTO. I have a remark in my text to > the effect that man pages contain text stating that man is obsolete, and that > you should use the info pages instead. > >I actually have not seen this lately. What is the status of man and info > at the moment? I think the intention (20 years ago?) was that 'info' should replace 'man'. I can understand, even appreciate, the idea: it allows linking, multiple documents per command, and is a "richer" format. Unfortunately, the reality was that the uptake was awful because most of us (I include myself in "us" here) hated 'info' and didn't use it because we couldn't remember the multiple awkward commands required to interact with it. I open a man page, I scroll - done. I opened the man page because I wanted to learn about the command whose man page I opened - I don't want to have to learn about 'info' before I can learn about any other command ... The people behind 'info' stuck to their guns for a decade or more, but I think the whole thing has pretty much given up the ghost at this point. This is based on my own limited observation and opinion, not any actual research. -- Giles https://www.gilesorr.com/ giles...@gmail.com --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
[GTALUG] Man and Info Pages
I am updating my UNIX Command Line HOWTO. I have a remark in my text to the effect that man pages contain text stating that man is obsolete, and that you should use the info pages instead. I actually have not seen this lately. What is the status of man and info at the moment? -- Howard Gibson hgib...@eol.ca jhowardgib...@gmail.com http://home.eol.ca/~hgibson --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
