On Mon, Jan 08, 2007 at 10:02:11PM -0500, Eric S. Raymond wrote: > > Gunnar, Linux man(1) can do this *now*. I added the code myself over a > year ago. All that's needed is for HTML pages to be in the right > places under /usr/man and it's game over. Of course, if you were > insistent on a crappy presentation, you could always set BROWSER=lynx > and get behavior almost as primitive as man(1). Sorry about the > working hyperlinks.
[...] > > But the preference for man(1) is not, in fact, a preference for > reading nroffed output on an xterm -- it's a preference for a > *retrieval protocol*, a set of reflexes about how to *find* stuff. > The display channel is nearly irrelevant to that preference. > Let me start by saying that I think that the project we are discussing is great and that we all owe ESR a debt of gratitude for all the work he has done and will do. I agree with Eric that most, or at least many, users would probably prefer HTML rendered man pages. I do not think it's correct, however, to conclude that only Unix troglodytes stuck in the eighties would prefer to read man pages in an xterm or similar window. As a Vim user, I use the K command to pop up a man page in an editor window when I need to check the exact usage or parameters. I know that emacs users can do similar things with the M-x man command. Most serious developers use either emacs or Vim, so I'd be willing to bet that they prefer to read most of their man pages this way. To be sure, these commands could just as easily bring up the man page in a browser, but this exacts a serious penalty for *most* users. As a long-time reader of ESR, I know that he prefers to have a *single* window on his desktop with an emacs window and (presumably) a browser side by side. With this arrangement, having the man page render in the browser exacts no extra cost and has all the benefits that we've been discussing. Most of us, though, have several windows on our desktops. For example, I have a window dedicated to my browser, which takes up the whole desktop. If I'm editing and want to pop up a man page in the browser, I would have to change windows, a serious interruption of focus (so to speak). One could argue, I suppose, that this just shows that ESR is correct and we should stick to a single window, but there's a whole bunch of us who disagree. At the end of the day, there's no reason we can't have both worlds. In those situations where it makes sense to render the man page in a browser the system does so. In those cases where it's most convenient to pop it up in an editor window or other viewer, it can do that. The important thing is that the behavior be configurable for each user, and that we don't dismiss a desire for the current behavior as indicative of arrested development. jcs _______________________________________________ Groff mailing list Groff@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/groff
