[oclug]manpage advocacy

[Michael P. Soulier]

    A thread started up in the irc channel today about why so many packages
don't have manpages, and how much that angered the members of the channel when
they do not. We started talking about what we could do about it, and I thought
I'd bring it up here. 

    Regardless of whether you prefer man, info, html, whatever, it's difficult
to argue (dangerous statement with this crowd) that one, single system of
manuals for Linux is a bad idea. My personal requirements are:

o it must work in a terminal - provide something fancier if you like, but the
  option to use the system without being crippled while in a simple terminal
  must exist

o each manual must be one long page for easy scanning with simple tools like
  a pager (less)

    That's about it. Add to this what you like, but keep common denominators
in mind please. 

    Now, coming out of this I would really like to start advocating that this
kind of thing be done, and done right. Currently the manpage system is, IMHO,
our best option (/me dons flame retardent suit). I think this group could
start chasing down those who are producing software without manpages, and
encourage/help them to start doing so. I personally believe that every
executable should have a manpage. 

    Comments?

    Flames to /dev/null. I don't have the time. 

    Mike

-- 
Michael P. Soulier <msoulier at digitaltorque.ca>, GnuPG pub key: 5BC8BE08
"...the word HACK is used as a verb to indicate a massive amount
of nerd-like effort."  -Harley Hahn, A Student's Guide to Unix
HTML Email Considered Harmful: http://expita.com/nomime.html
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