Subject: Re: NetPBM man pages are arrogant, infuriating, nonfunctional.
To: Bryan Henderson <bryanh@giraffe-data.com>
From: Todd Vierling <tv@duh.org>
List: tech-pkg
Date: 07/26/2004 22:16:52
On Mon, 26 Jul 2004, Bryan Henderson wrote:

> BTW, if anyone has any idea how to make the snooty "go to this URL"
> man pages less so, I'd love to fix it.

The least the package could have in absence of [tn]roff doc is a --help or
-help for all commands with a usage summary.  That would make the programs
at least reasonably command-line navigable; simply seeing a usage message
like [-gamma value] is enough for most folks to understand that such an
option sets the gamma value to the one specified.

Currently most netpbm programs don't even have a [-]-help.  Without
roff-format doc, that really makes it difficult to use the programs without
browsing offline docs (which is a bit cumbersome for the vast majority, who
don't have their .shrc or .cshrc set up the way you do :).

-- 
-- Todd Vierling <tv@duh.org> <tv@pobox.com>