[NTLUG:Discuss] SuSE 9 or 9.1 PATH environment changes after su

[Kevin Brannen]

Val Harris wrote:

> Terry wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 10 Sep 2004 23:36:30 -0500, Kevin Brannen 
>> <kbrannen at pwhome.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> <soapbox>
>>> And like so many other places, GNU wants you to go read info files to
>>> find out how the command really works because they're too lazy to make
>>> proper man pages (or is it arrogant because they think "info" is
>>> better?).  A pox on them for this stupidity!
>>> </soapbox>
>>>
>>
>> Maybe one of us concerned citicizens [/users] shoud re-write the man
>> file for them.  (Maybe they're just busy, not lazy).
>> </soapboz>  :)
>>
>
> I gotta' agree with Kevin on this one!  Info readable files are
> generated from Texinfo source.  Even if the world did need another
> markup language, I have to wonder why the inventors of the info
> reader felt we needed another presentation language.  Why not
> generate man pages directly from the Texinfo source?


Naw, they aren't lazy.  They purposefully don't want to do it.  I forget 
which one, but there is/was a man page that specifically stated that the 
man page for that command was out of date and they didn't want to update 
it, to go see the info page instead, and that if they took the time to 
fix the man page they wouldn't have time to write any software.  *That* 
is what sent me over the edge about info pages, beside the fact that you 
seem to need to know emacs to use the info command well and I'm a vi 
guy. :-)  Fortunately, tkinfo now exists and makes them semi-usable, as 
does "info topic > file" then looking at the file; but that's still not 
the same as a good man page (at least to me).

As to why they did that, IIRC, GNU started working on info pages because 
they wanted something with hyperlink type capability, and that was 
before HTML was available (or at least widely available).  So they tried 
to create a new standard that was better than man pages, from Texinfo as 
Val points out.

I still think they made the wrong decision.  Man pages are a reasonable 
standard in the Unix world.  I have thought about trying to fix some of 
them and submitting them to the GNU folks, but I just haven't gotten 
over their statement.  (Yeh, a flaw of mine. :-)

Kevin