On 1/7/23, Arsen Arsenović <[email protected]> wrote: > Alejandro Colomar <[email protected]> writes: >> How about adding the following: >> >> For readers more familiar with manual pages, it might be interesting >> to pipe info(1) through less(1): >> >> info info | less > > This suffers from decreased navigability, though, as links (xrefs and > menu entries especially) become non-clickable.
That's a judgment call. I find it more navigable despite that restriction, in part because the entire manual is available on one (virtual) page. Admittedly I'm also more familiar with "less" than with the "info" interface, but "less" can be used to browse any file or pipeline output, whereas "info" can be used to browse only info manuals, so the "less" interface is by far the more useful one to master. This is in line with the Unix philosophy: use combinations of simple tools to do complex things. > That said, that could be done, if others agree, The important thing, I think, is that nowhere does the man page mention info's behavior when its output is piped or redirected. "info" being interactive, it probably doesn't even occur to most users *to* pipe or redirect it (it certainly didn't to me until someone else pointed out that trick), and none of the examples in the EXAMPLES section take advantage of this. A single sentence about this in the DESCRIPTION, plus a single example illustrating it in EXAMPLES, would let users deduce the "| less" behavior even if that was not the specific example used (though it does seem the most obvious).
