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

Michael Sweet mike at easysw.com
Tue Jun 20 10:45:56 PDT 2006


wtautz wrote:
> 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?

Man pages have some specific structuring commands (section number,
etc.) that can't be easily represented in HTML.  Also, tables,
lists, and other HTML things don't map cleanly to nroff...

However, it is fairly trivial to go from man to HTML for presentation
(essentially a "lossy" conversion).

-- 
______________________________________________________________________
Michael Sweet, Easy Software Products           mike at easysw dot com
Internet Printing and Document Software          http://www.easysw.com




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