Man vs. Info: documenting the software
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From: Ivan Shmakov on 3 Feb 2010 00:08 >>>>> "S" == Seebs <usenet-nospam(a)seebs.net> writes: >>>>> "IS" == Ivan Shmakov <ivan(a)main.uusia.org> wrote: S> Exactly. I can search for a word that I am sure would occur in the S> *discussion* of a thing, without knowing what name the author would S> have picked for the *heading*. IS> Exactly. And you can do the same with Info. S> Can I? Yep. S> I've never found a way, because the manual is broken up into nodes, S> and a search seems to only search the current node. In Emacs' Info (as of Emacs 22.2.1), C-s and C-r search over the node, while 's' searches through the whole Info document. For stand-alone Info (as of 4.8), both seem to search over the whole document. ... Though it takes ages of time to find the documentation for, e. g., printf () in (libc), because of a number of examples referencing that very function. The index at 'i' is much more convenient in this particular case. IS> Don't you confuse the index with the table of contents here? (Note IS> also that both are distinct to Info menus.) S> I don't *think* so. IS> Indeed, the index shows the headings (see below for an example), IS> but not {\em just} the headings. >> - --cut: (libc) Concept Index -- >> * abort signal: Program Error Signals. >> * aborting a program: Aborting a Program. S> Both of these are headings. I've never heard of a section being under such a sheer number of headings before. But you're right in that both the headings and the index terms are entered into the source manually. S> If the discussion of "aborting a program" contained a word that S> wasn't indexed, ... Then it may be a bug in the manual. S> searching the index wouldn't find it, but searching the whole S> document would. Agreed. But having both an index and a searchable document is more convenient than having just one of them. IS> The computers are somewhat different to the record stores, as you IS> can easily have the same record pointed from several sections at IS> once. S> If it's not in EVERY section, I still have the very real risk of S> looking in the wrong section and not finding it. That way, you're under a risk of looking it in the wrong store! S> And if it is, the sections are useless to me, because they aren't S> different from each other. S> There are things for which sectioned views of the world are nice, S> but there are times when I just want to search the whole document. Luckily, Info serves one both ways. -- FSF associate member #7257
From: Ivan Shmakov on 3 Feb 2010 00:12 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 >>>>> "S" == Seebs <usenet-nospam(a)seebs.net> writes: >>>>> "IS" == Ivan Shmakov <ivan(a)main.uusia.org> wrote: IS> ... I wonder, whether Vim will ever support anything to the effect IS> of ?set -o emacs?? S> Er, what? "set -o emacs" and "set -o vi" are shell commands, not S> editor commands. Both the GNU Emacs and GNU Readline have modes to support Vim-like key bindings. Now, I wonder, will Vim ever show some courtesy and support the Emacs-like key bindings in turn? IS> I wanted to note that the Man pages are there out of necessity, not IS> because they're ?standard?. S> The way to show that something is not standard would be to show that S> the standard doesn't specify it, not to appeal to whether a S> particular system has it. Many systems lack many features which are S> clearly standardized. I didn't say that they're not standard. I've just noted that they're out of necessity on these particular systems. - -- FSF associate member #7257 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAktpBdAACgkQMBO2oCMOM0o/HACcD5PT6BHpxnzT+AJxKXeOL2lQ fvAAoL4++tt7v28HkLgjzexxB2rSPFOM =1VBm -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
From: Seebs on 3 Feb 2010 00:39 On 2010-02-03, Ivan Shmakov <ivan(a)main.uusia.org> wrote: > Both the GNU Emacs and GNU Readline have modes to support > Vim-like key bindings. Now, I wonder, will Vim ever show some > courtesy and support the Emacs-like key bindings in turn? I don't see why it should. It is reasonable for things other than editors to support the keybindings of the two most common editors. It is not necessarily reasonable to expect an editor to support another editor's keybindings. In particular, since vi-derived editors simply *don't have* many of the concepts that emacs has keybindings for, I don't think it's plausible. Emacs can be programmed to do pretty much anything (limited by available memory and CPU time, in practice). vi isn't designed like that. > S> The way to show that something is not standard would be to show that > S> the standard doesn't specify it, not to appeal to whether a > S> particular system has it. Many systems lack many features which are > S> clearly standardized. > I didn't say that they're not standard. I've just noted that > they're out of necessity on these particular systems. I have apparently lost the thread. I asserted that they were a standard tool for a task. You showed examples of systems which lacked that tool. I do not understand what you mean by "out of necessity". -s -- Copyright 2010, all wrongs reversed. Peter Seebach / usenet-nospam(a)seebs.net http://www.seebs.net/log/ <-- lawsuits, religion, and funny pictures http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Game_(Scientology) <-- get educated!
From: Sidney Lambe on 3 Feb 2010 01:47 On comp.unix.shell, Ivan Shmakov <ivan(a)main.uusia.org> wrote: The post is simply unreadable for all the superfluous garbage in it and weird formatting. [delete] Sid
From: Tony Sequeira on 3 Feb 2010 04:58
Ben Finney wrote: > Tony Sequeira <nobody(a)127.0.0.1> writes: > >> Jerry Peters wrote: >> >>> For when I have to use the info abomination, I use tkinfo; it's not >>> perfect, but just about anything is better than having to use emacs >>> key bindings. >> Thanks for that, tkinfo makes life easier, not much, but some. I'd >> just about given up on the info documentation. > > You might also be interested in 'pinfo', an alternative text-mode info > browser <URL:http://pinfo.alioth.debian.org/>. > Even better. Cheers. -- S. Anthony Sequeira ++ OS/2 must die! ++ |