Groups | Search | Server Info | Keyboard shortcuts | Login | Register [http] [https] [nntp] [nntps]

Groups > linux.debian.user > #270037

Re: info vs. man (was: Re: date for week)

Show key headers only | View raw

On Tue, Jun 11, 2024 at 11:22:17PM +0700, Max Nikulin wrote:
> On 11/06/2024 06:45, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> > Should you ever feel a need to read the longer version of the
> > documentation, it's in GNU info pages.  So you would need to type
> > the command "info coreutils date" to get to it.  And then you'd need
> > to figure out the user interface of the "info" program, which is not
> > intuitive unless you happen to be an emacs power user already.
> 
> Emacs power users can type
>     M-x info RET
> or
>     M-: (info "(coreutils) date conversion specifiers") RET
> or at least
>     emacs -f info-standalone '(coreutils) date conversion specifiers'
> 
> I do not mind that info browsers have usability issues. For beginners I
> would recommend tkinfo instead of terminal "info". I have not tried pinfo.
> 
> Texinfo, unlike man, has a notion of hyperlink. In the case of man it is
> just formatting that suggests that some part of text is a reference to
> another document or another section.

See, this is all fine -- you've searched for the appropriate section, and
you've generated a cryptic command that someone else could type inside
emacs to get to that same section.  I'm sure there's an "info" equivalent
that can be done from a shell without invoking emacs.

None of that's useful to a person who wants to search for that information
in the first place without consulting an expert who's already done the
work.

What I was trying to do in my reply was "teach them how to fish" -- to
show them how to bring up the man page themselves, and look for basic
information like "how do I get the name of the day of the week, instead
of the numeric index of the day of the week" without having to bother
an international mailing list.

So, I gave basic instructions for how to bring up the man page, and a
hint about searching for a key word related to their question.  I even
provided a small piece of the man page, which happens to include the
answer they're looking for, because I'm also a pessimist who knows
that they probably won't look it up themselves, and may become angry
if we don't spoon-feed them the actual answer.

I also provided a reference to the info page, and a command that would
bring that up, should the need ever arise.  More importantly, I revealed
that info pages *exist* and *are a thing* that they need to know about.
It's planting a seed for the future.

Back to linux.debian.user | Previous | Next — Previous in thread | Next in thread | Find similar | Unroll thread

Thread

date for week Jeff Peng <jeff@tls-mail.com> - 2024-06-11 01:30 +0200
  Re: date for week Roberto C. Sánchez <roberto@debian.org> - 2024-06-11 01:30 +0200
    Re: date for week Jeff Peng <jeff@tls-mail.com> - 2024-06-11 01:50 +0200
  Re: date for week Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2024-06-11 01:50 +0200
    info vs. man (was: Re: date for week) Max Nikulin <manikulin@gmail.com> - 2024-06-11 18:30 +0200
      Re: info vs. man (was: Re: date for week) Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2024-06-11 20:10 +0200
        Re: info vs. man Max Nikulin <manikulin@gmail.com> - 2024-06-12 18:10 +0200
  Re: date for week "rtnetzlof@windstream.net" <rtnetzlof@windstream.net> - 2024-06-11 01:50 +0200

csiph-web