Message-Id: <199907271449.JAA00866@darwin.sfbr.org>
Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1999 09:49:29 -0500 (CDT)
From: Jeff Williams <jeffw AT darwin DOT sfbr DOT org>
Subject: Re: man page style guide
To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
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Reply-To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com

Ok, thanks for the replies; here's a synopsis:

-: [fred]
-: Here's a good document taken from the Linux Mini-HOWTO's:
-: ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/docs/howto/mini/Man-Page

This is exactly what I was looking for---thanks!  BTW, the
latest version of this document lives at

http://www.shuttle.de/schweikh/man_page_howto.html


-: [Michel]
-: You do know that man-pages are generated by a program named `nroff'
-: (or in the GNU case, `gnroff'), don't you? If not, you might want to
-: download djgpp/v2gnu/groff*b.zip from where you found DJGPP.

Yep, knew that.  The original Ossanna and Kernighan Troff User's Manual
can be found at

http://xerxes.thphy.uni-duesseldorf.de/~vieth/subjects/computer/troff/


-: [Eli]
-: > [1] I actually *like* man-pages more than info pages [:-/
-: 
-: Care to elaborate?  Given that in this case, you are the one who will be 
-: writing the docs, and that the docs is going to be a simple linear text, 
-: why would you assume that man page will be better in this case as well?

Not better necessarily, just my preference (see below).

-: [Eli]
-: Texinfo has an advantage of being converted into more formats, and many 
-: DJGPP users don't have man and Less installed, while Info is in the 
-: minimal suggested installation, and so is always there.  Texinfo can also 
-: be converted to HTML.

These are good arguments, and I'm listening.  But I use both info and
man/less on my djgpp box, and for programs requiring relatively little
documentation I really like the simplicity, clean layout, and fast
loading of the classical man page.  Perhaps as the number of programs
and the amount of documentation both increase Texinfo will be a better
way to go.

jtw