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From: "Carlos E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc,comp.unix.shell
Subject: Re: man pages (was Re: [OT] Punch card times)
Date: Sun, 1 Nov 2026 13:07:09 +0100
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On 2026-10-31 22:57, Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:
> On Sat, 31 Oct 2026 11:40:12 +0100, 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.
> 
> Most man pages are not supposed to be that large. Of course, there
> are some exceptions (like bash). For those I think you’ll find the
> man page was generated from some other, more navigable form anyway.
> 
> For example, if you look at Perl, you will see its documentation is
> broken up across a whole series of man pages -- over 200 of them.
> 
> (Is that going too far in the other direction, do you think ... ?)
> 
> Tip: if you prefer another form, like PDF, it’s quite easy to generate
> that from any man page. I used to use a somewhat convoluted command
> for this, but it turns the usual Linux “man” command has an option to
> directly choose the output format, e.g. view a man page directly in
> typeset form without saving it to a file:

PDF is fine, but not if the source is a man page, because there are no 
cross references that you can click or tap; ditto table of contents and 
index.

> 
>      man -Tpdf 7 unix | okular - &
> 
> (Substitute your choice of favourite PDF reader.)
> 
>> Info pages are somewhat better.
> 
> I have tried info pages a few times, but always found them awkward to
> navigate. I’ve never heard of anybody who liked them.

Try "pinfo" as navigator instead.


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