9 Apr
2008
9 Apr
'08
9:42 a.m.
On Wed, Apr 9, 2008 at 9:19 AM, Jules Richardson
<jules.richardson99 at gmail.com> wrote:
Richard wrote:
GNU info reminds me of the ITS help system, which isn't too surprising
considering the Head Idiot's background. Have I made it clear yet that
I really dislike Stallman? I like ITS and LispM, Stallman's favorites
which are now, as Dennis Ritchie says, fertilizing the OS field from
below; I just don't like Stallman.
John
--
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn
The worst part is when they intentionally cripple
the man page and
force you into the awful info system.
Aha, the old "The GNU folks, in general, abhor man pages, and create
info documents instead". Bastards. :-)
My preference order goes something like: man page, book, online docs, other
online resources (Google search, usenet etc.), utility's built-in help,
'info' documentation.
How old is 'info' anyway - does it pre-date widespread (whatever that may
mean!) web use? I don't think I had cause to come across it until mid/late
90s (man pages were pretty well maintained until about then), by which time
the web was well established. I'm not sure if info is a poor imitation of a
bunch of HTML pages, or merely a poor implementation of a more general
hypertext system (which had of course been around for many years previous)
cheers
Jules (skirting the bounds of off-topicness a little... sorry)