[cups.general] Some of the manpages seem sparse when compared toweb docs

wtautz wtautz at cs.uwaterloo.ca
Tue Jun 20 09:05:06 PDT 2006


Michael Sweet wrote:
> wtautz wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> If one compares the references webpages to manpages they seem rich
>> in comparison. For example if I go to the
>> http://localhost/help/ref-printers-conf.html?TOPIC=References&QUERY=
>> I get more detailed doc then when I go
>> http://localhost/631/help/man-printers.conf.html?TOPIC=Man+Pages&QUERY=
>>
>> I suppose the response would be, one is a reference ;-)
>>
>> Another instance is lpoptions which doesn't explain much that one can do
>> with the -o option
>> whereas http://www.cups.org/documentation.php/options.html is richly
>> detailed. As for as
>> I can tell this webpage doesn't even get installed, i.e., I have to go
>> to www.cups.org to
>> read it.
>
> Strange, help/options.html is listed in the documentation makefile,
> so I'd guess this is a packaging problem in your distro?
>
> The man pages are intentionally sparse - we a) don't have the
> resources to mantain a lot of separate but similar documentation,
> b) the nroff format isn't particularly rich compared to HTML, and
> c) they are intended as quick reference guides (like "I don't remember
> this option name or the syntax of this command") while the HTML help
> files are more in-depth with some tutorial-like info...
>
It looks like the install converts manpages to html. Why not go the opposite
way ...but that would probably mean poor quality manpages?





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