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I want my man pages back
oreillynet.com — Only *nix users will get this!! Man pages are an endangered species. Give me back my man pages! HTML docs are nice, but not very readable on a headless server that does not run X windows. Hunting down whatever weirdo directory the HTML help docs is not a fun use of time. Reading them in a text HTML browser is an even bigger waste of time.
3monkeys- 627 diggs
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- Lorian, on 10/12/2007, -6/+21While for the most part I prefer the man pages, for applications such as mplayer (really long manual) having a HTML version is a real life saver.
- 1021, on 10/12/2007, -2/+31Hence the use of the forward slash in man window was invented... there are no real men left in the world anymore... :sigh:
- TiMMY8765, on 10/12/2007, -5/+9KDE has a graphical man page viewer, that makes them look like web pages (I think, it's been a while since I used KDE). Why can't they just implement something like that instead of getting rid of man pages?
- billyboobs34, on 10/12/2007, -0/+49You have to watch your man pages around Mark Foley...
- 1021, on 10/12/2007, -5/+4@billy
Nah, he's more into the child pages.
I can't believe how good post this was...sad but good. - splitbrain, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Hey and there is http://man.cx to view nearly any manpage in HTML as well.
- skydivingdutch, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Never go to www.manpages.com like I once did.
- Ademan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I couldn't help but be afraid of http://www.man.cx just because of the goatse association
- Lorian, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11021: Thanks, didn't know that. HTML version begone!
- GnuTzu, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11This is a major issue for those of use that need to work through a terminal.
Some developers are eschewing man pages for info pages. This is a fine idea for the structure that info provides, but it's problem for those of us that prefer vi style keystrokes. Yes, there's a compatibility option, but I've ending up preferring pinfo instead. Unfortunately, pinfo isn't installed by default on most distributions (which needs to happen if there are going to be more info pages).
If we must have HTML and XML, then please design for lynx and links. I was very impressed with Gentoo's installation pages. Still, I have yet to see HTML man pages that are as readily installed as the basic man page package.
So, yes; the basic man page system is still important. Info people would do us a great favor if they would write a nice script to port their info pages back to man pages so that we can have both. The same goes for HTML people. Yes, I know there is some ugliness involved, but I'd rather have ugly than a something telling me that I should only use info.
(On a side note, I was impressed to find that Sun man pages are coded in a subset of docbook. Nice, but I'm still working on an easy conversion to HTML.)- 3monkeys, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4docbook has stylesheets for html. and as far as man pages go see http://docbook2x.sourceforge.net/
- Obvioustroll, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Wow. I was afraid to say it, but since you said it first, "I hate info, too!" I never remember the keystrokes, I only ever end up there because I was directed to it by a lobotomized man page and, yes, I always work in terminal mode because I'm writing device drivers and X is just one more layer to separate me from the machine.
- dougmc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I hate info pages too.
And what's even worse than not having man pages and having to use info? Having outdated man pages and up to date info pages for a given command. So you do a `man command', it comes up and gives you the information you need -- and it turns out to be wrong.
man pages are easy to convert to .html. If you want to know how, `man groff' if your system has it. troff might have it too.
- vvvv, on 10/12/2007, -50/+2Who cares *nix documentation sucks in any format
- damentz, on 10/12/2007, -3/+18Once you start using them, you will be suprised at how god damn useful they are. RESPECT. MAN PAGES.
However I can feel how frustrated spyware and adware program devs would be to describe how much their program does absolutely nothing but piss you off in them =(.
- damentz, on 10/12/2007, -3/+18Once you start using them, you will be suprised at how god damn useful they are. RESPECT. MAN PAGES.
- ImTheDarkcyde, on 10/12/2007, -38/+5they are dying because they are antiquated and obsolete
i'm sure you want the good ol' days back, but its like saying "i want win3.11 back!"- damentz, on 10/12/2007, -2/+23You dont get the point, noone needs fancy graphics when your not in X. ***** HTML documented material. MAN pages are so standard it kills w3c, not sure if thats a good analogy.
- Zotter, on 10/12/2007, -5/+15i'm sure you want the good ol' days back, but its like saying "i want win3.11 back!"
You really have no clue just what kind of perspective that throws your comment into, do you. - JonForTheWin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7If man pages weren't an endangered species, quality man pages would be. Not a problem with OpenBSD though.
- hosiah, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7@ImTheDarkcyde
No offense, but your attitude is classic "recreational user vs working user". I'm sure all this stuff about documentation seems like nonsense to you if all you do with a machine is surf the web and play games, but the people building that web and programming those games have to work hard and learn fast.
When I dive into the docs in a frantic rush to look up those three obscurce foo switches to the shell utility I'm using so I can finish the project for my client before deadline, the last thing I need is to wait five mnutes for some fancy graphics to load. Man pages are *instant* - summon them and *bam* they shoot open. I use them all the time, and I'm nowhere near programming device drivers.
Check out Digg's layout right here: Lots of text, tiny little buttons, a couple of ads, just enough graphics trim to look decent. Which you can appreciate when you're loading a thread with 1200 comments in it. Unfortunately, the average hardware setup still isn't nice enough to afford transparent rotating XGL windows with any kind of speed - even when it is, coders will still run in console and use the extra cycles for compiling. It's the difference between work and play.
- jibbityjab, on 10/12/2007, -10/+21[Insert Mark Foley joke here.]
- mgrucker, on 10/12/2007, -12/+6bravo good sir :lol:
- rationalist, on 10/12/2007, -4/+11[insert] They've been replaced with boy pages. [/insert]
- charged2885, on 10/12/2007, -5/+9i use openbsd for many reasons. one of them being the quality of their man pages.
- ScottMaximus, on 10/12/2007, -12/+4Being an OpenBSD user, I'm sure you like men outside of your OS.
- pgiessel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Pretty much all the *BSDs have great man pages. FreeBSD has great man pages too.
- ScottMaximus, on 10/12/2007, -12/+4Being an OpenBSD user, I'm sure you like men outside of your OS.
- sybersnake, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7the most important of all, you can access 'man' from the terminal via SSH. I hate it when man pages aren't available for stuff and i gotta goto a different machine to check the web.
- Shwenk, on 10/12/2007, -13/+2O my
- sbovisjb1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I liked the man pages, true some of them were a bit big, my only gripe was that all that text hurt the eyes. Remember when in doubt, man will help you out!
- gr8whitesavage, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5When did they get taken away?
- RidinDirty, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5If your such a lamer that you need to view man pages in HTML format you could always try: man man2html...
- dbr_onix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Err, the problem this article is stating needs something like html2man (Which is around. http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/html2text/ - a small shell-script that does : ./html2text.py [url] | less # would be pretty much the same, although not as convient, as you'd have to find the URL and paste/type it manually..)
- Ben
- dbr_onix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Err, the problem this article is stating needs something like html2man (Which is around. http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/html2text/ - a small shell-script that does : ./html2text.py [url] | less # would be pretty much the same, although not as convient, as you'd have to find the URL and paste/type it manually..)
- pumacub, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Humm
- Xarou, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8When I think about man pages, I instantly think about this shirt
http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/sysadmin/5b7e/- JonForTheWin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2That's not a bug, it's a feature to prevent such evil things from causing the kernel to panic the monitor explode the processor melt and have the optical drive spit out a disc so fast that it cuts off your left testicle like a boomerang!
Just another reason man kicks ass. - Obvioustroll, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6> man woman
No man entry for woman
How's that old script go?
touch; finger; mount; sleep - 1911, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Who needs the shirt? Use your terminal.
% man woman
No manual entry for woman
Dang! That has to be a lie!
% info woman
File: woman, Node: Top, Next: Introduction, Prev: (dir), Up: (dir)
[snip]
Wow! They hide everyting in the infernal info pages!
Brief snippet from the introduction:
Advantages
Much more direct, does not require any external programs. Supports
completion on man page names.
Disadvantages
Not a complete emulation. Currently no support for `eqn' or
`tbl'. Slightly slower for large man pages (but usually faster for
small- and medium-size pages).
- JonForTheWin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2That's not a bug, it's a feature to prevent such evil things from causing the kernel to panic the monitor explode the processor melt and have the optical drive spit out a disc so fast that it cuts off your left testicle like a boomerang!
- zenloich, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I'm fresh out of college and I've been a professional programmer for about 7 months now. I do all of my work through a terminal. I find man pages to be extremely useful. I contradict the notion that people who like man pages are just holding onto the past. There is nothing quicker and easier than looking up a man page when you spend your entire day staring at a terminal. At least, not that I'm aware of.
- Obvioustroll, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11What I really, really, REALLY hate are man pages that say "this is a place holder. You should really go to someplace else for the real docs."
- ajck, on 10/12/2007, -11/+2> I want my man pages back
You want your man pages back?
I want my woman pages back! Give it to me baby, oh yeah! oh yeah!
And what's all this talk of pages anyway? I thought you had a Congressional scandal going on or something?
;-) - seuaniu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Man pages are alive and well in *bsd, and some commercial unixes have them all updated too. The problem here is linux. lots of linux documentation is badly scattered, incomplete, and in several different formats.
And before I get flamed down to the second circle of hell for criticizing *anything* about linux, lemme say that I use linux everyday on servers and workstations, and I love it.- hosiah, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4"badly scattered, incomplete, and in several different formats."
No, we don't flame the truth. Even Eric S raymond referred to it as the "Linux documentation zoo". See my long comment downthread, I think you'll relate.
- hosiah, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4"badly scattered, incomplete, and in several different formats."
- genetic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1you can always redirect the output of a man page to a file
man cp > cp_manual.txt - cptnapalm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I just use Linux on my laptop. My desktop has Solaris. I'm not programming much of anything and I'm not getting paid to do anything with it.
I use man pages a lot. Whether it is to learn how to use an unfamiliar program or to quickly find out what the options are, a good man page always has that information.
I'm unsure that I have used info in any worthwhile way more than two or three times. HTML help looks very nice... after I've had to dig through the filesystem to find the right directory, then find the right html file, the open it in a web browser. Even then, what seems to make into html help files is not particularly helpful to me.
So, pretty please with sugar on top, write the damn man page. - jaikar, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2I wonder if any of those praising man pages against HTML formatted ones for Lynx, and other elegant text browsers, have looked at the current man page source. Under the hood, it is all the same. So you're better off using XML style tag formatting.
I think XML+XSLT needs to be used to bring the old format into the light of present day advances. That could easily be accomplished without the complexity of using escape characters and arcane looking formatting software [PIC/Don't remember what is the other].
Man pages are still built on legacy formatting software that needs to be brought up to date.
The whole terminal look/feel and output needs to be brought up to present day tech. - helfire, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2seriously if any *nix geek has a hard time reading html files in a terminal they should be shot...
lynx file.html = great text web browser.
Problem solved- pauldonnelly, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1That's not the point. The pain-in-the-ass part is tracking down the HTML docs wherever they've been squirreled away. Much easier is to type "man confusingsoftware", and know you'll get your docs.
- 955701, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2lynx is your friend.
- Urusai, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Hey, HTML works in terminal mode just fine, just ask any lynx/links/elinks user.
Hmm, beaten...but I just want to add, "info" sucks. Somebody add hyperlinks to man pages, or make a lite HTML browser specialized for just reading help files (no scripting, no fancy tags, minimal keystrokes required). - purpleax, on 10/12/2007, -5/+2Seriously - why do you write Unix like *nix? now thats stupid!
Sure, Unix is a trademark and all these companies cant use the name - but you don't see people talking about *indows, or *ac !!
but anyway, I digress....
as a long time Unix user - man pages saved my bacon more than once - they should stay!- prophet6, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9*nix is a term designed to collectively refer to UNIX, Linux, and all other POSIX based systems...it's not an attempt to evade trademark infringement.
- webcrumb, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1If it's got an X in it, it's *nix!
Hence running a *nix on the Xbox... and the preoccupation with XXX...
- prophet6, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I'm so refreshed to hear that I'm not the only one who thinks info is completely unusable. :)
I'm particularly frustrated with the fact that it pulls up info's own documentation instead of an error message if it can't find the document it's looking for. It usually takes me a good 20 seconds to figure out what I'm reading, as it's not labelled anywhere. - inkswamp, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1I've been using Unix heavily for several years now (although I'm still a newbie in many ways) but I hate man pages. I like the idea of built-in documentation, don't get me wrong, but the whole implementation of man pages is just awful and anachronistic at this point.
A simple example... ever try this so you can open the man text in a non-Unix editor?
man grep > ~/grep_doc.txt
It comes out with all the damn formatting and you have to run it through a filter to get a reasonably useful text file of the output. Horrible. Replacing it with something more modern is *long* overdue.- Craz1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5the correct way would be
man grep | col -b > grep.txt
but then again... you would have known that if you had "read the man page" :P
- Craz1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5the correct way would be
- hosiah, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5FWIW:
In my desperate newbie days, I wrote a doc finder. I used locate and lots of grep and sed to grok *WHERE* in the hell any documentation on program foo was to be found and spit out a list sorted by format (man, info, html, README, HOWTO, pdf, ps, etc.), to which I could then press two key strokes to read it all in the terminal using various filters and programs.
I never dreamed of releasing it to the public, but now that I see there's others who feel the same way I do I'll have to see about doing it over and posting it.
For those of you wondering what's gotten into us: It's not a matter of viewing HTML in a console, it's that the man system is organized and integrated with whereis, whatis, apropos, and others. HTML files might be in /usr/doc, /usr/share/doc, /usr/bin/program_name/doc, /bin/program_name/manuals/html/, /doc/html.... and who knows if it's in HTML until you find it? Sometimes you'll be going:
"man foo"
"no manual entry for foo"
"info foo"
"*beep* this is the top of the info tree..."
"foo --help"
"foo: error, invalid argument. Check documentation for usage"
"locate foo | grep doc"
"...."
and so on... However, this is more common with homebrew offbeat stuff that may not be maintained. The majority of FOSS programs follow some form of documentation protocol. - wheresjim, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1I believe that in this in the interest of sexual equality they should be referred to as "person pages". Please update you byn directories accordingly. Thank you.
- hosiah, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Usenet called. They want their joke back.
- masterakowski, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4CLI user, and man page respecter, myself.
- jimmiejaz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2man > *
Isn't that why Man was created first, then Woman? - 8675309, on 10/12/2007, -5/+0$ man mount
That just KILLS me.
ok not really. - seuaniu, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1oh yeah, I can relate. But don't be a tease! Where's that script? We could probably get it up to snuff to include in some distros!
- burke, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2If you really need to read an html file from the console, just do:
lynx -dump file.html | less - ratsg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1the man pages are still fine in Solaris.
It might help the conversation if the author had included the environment/Operating system/application that the man pages had either disappeared in. - Kwipper, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1*takes a look at the topic* Uhh... okay....
http://www.gay.com
There you go. K. Thx. Bye. - moronpatrol, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1man is for people who got crap to do and are literate, need more info theres billions of html pages on the web. Problem is html too time consuming, man much quicker if i ever need more info then i move onto the slow stuff
html help replacing man, blah blah is for idiots but it will happen.
the worst has to be microsofts html help pages in all thier apps....good for all the newbs and MS Professionals (hehe) .....jesus watching these look stuff up is like watching the grass grow...but they have to theres 5,000,000 menu options to pour through ...otherwise they'd have to work - pHr34kY, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Hmm...
Console apps should have man pages, GUI apps should have HTML help. Although a man page should still be used for GUI apps that take command line parameters.
I prefer man pages. I work on remote machines from a shell, and I need help for an app which is only installed on the remote machine.. man pages are great for that.
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