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Re: alternative "info" reader (was: kernel makeoptions)



On Sun, 27 Feb 2011, Chuck Swiger wrote:

On Feb 26, 2011, at 11:49 PM, Thomas Mueller wrote:
I'd like to get rid of info!  Either man or HTML is much better, even plain 
text is preferable to info.

It may help to understand that info documentation was chosen as an alternative to roff 
macros by RMS and the GNU project since it provided better indexing and cross-linking.  
This was long before the web existed or folks processing manpages (ie, the "See 
also" section) into HTML documents with working hyperlinks.

From that central point, two major consequences should be noted:

1) Info docs were designed to be written and read in emacs; info is a 
stand-alone reader program which uses emacs-like keybindings.  If you get 
emacs, you should be fine in info.  If you don't understand emacs, well, info 
is likely to be obscure also.

2) All GNU software uses info as the primary means of documentation.

ncurses is one exception.

While a few GNU project maintainers try to keep manpages updated, the manpages for most GNU software (ie, the compiler toolchain) are outdated and are updated infrequently compared to the info docs. Often by volunteers from the BSD community, who do tend to prefer manpages... :-)

It's odd, but there appears to be no good conversion program between info and manpages (nor the reverse ;-), while there are conversions for both to
html...

--
Thomas E. Dickey
http://invisible-island.net
ftp://invisible-island.net


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