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From: "Carlos E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc,comp.unix.shell
Subject: Re: Internal navigation in the online manual
Date: Sun, 1 Nov 2026 13:03:44 +0100
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On 2026-11-01 02:08, Nuno Silva wrote:
> On 2026-10-31, Carlos E. R. wrote:
>> On 2026-10-31 16:57, Janis Papanagnou wrote:
>>> On 2026-10-31 11:40, Carlos E. R. wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Talking of manuals, I find large man pages very difficult to use,
>>>> specially when you need something specific. No clickable table of
>>>> content, no clickable index. Info pages are somewhat better.
>>>
>>> I agree with you on the _horrendous large_ 'man' "pages".
>>> They shouldn't replace exhaustive and thorough documentation, IMO.
>>> But worse I think are the ("maneuverable") 'info' pages.
>>> Or the habit of some "Unixes" to have no man-page information but
>>> only a stub with the hint to look into the (IMO horrendous) 'info'
>>> pages. (I'm aware that some certainly prefer them; how else would
>>> their proliferation be otherwise explainable.)
>>>
>>> Concerning "clickable" information generally, mind the time when
>>> man-pages were introduced!
>>
>> Yes, I understand that. Isn't time we get something better?
> 
> A question is how much of that is already possible using the current
> format.
> 
> And another question is whether the current format, which could easily
> be printed besides being installed as an online manual, does make for
> better documentation to read than something focused on having more
> internal references.

Printed documentation did have indexes and tables of content, with page 
numbers, so that you could find where something was in the paper.

As to printing man pages, well.. I can't store that much paper any more.




-- 
Cheers,
        Carlos E.R.
        ES🇪🇸, EU🇪🇺.