No man pages? (was Re: More random python observations from a perl programmer)

[John Landahl]

On Thu, Aug 19, 1999 at 02:43:26PM -0600, Tom Christiansen wrote:
> >What's all this about no Python manpages?
> 
> $ man python
> No manual entry for python
> [Exit 1]
> 
> $ locate python.1
> [Exit 1]
> 
> That there appears to be running a 1.5.1 version on a Redhat
> Linux system.  I haven't tried a from-scratch build.  I'm
> happy to blame RH.  Their doc situation is nasty.

Ahhhhhhhhhh, that seems to be the problem.  I just tried it on a recently
built (RedHat)SparcLinux box and got the same thing.

Having followed the manpage discussion a bit, I see two arguments that might
have gotten confused by this new info:

  1) There should at least be a python(1) manpage that tells you command
     line args, some basic information about the interpreter, etc.

  2) There should be manpages documenting all aspects of the language.

If your problem was mostly with 1) then I concur, and so would most Unix
types, I think.  The rest of this debate seems centered around issue 2), and
I'm not sure that was your main point.  I agree that 1) should be the
minimum, but I would tend to look for web-based cross-referenced
hypertextified documentation for more detailed information.  Though I've
definitely found "man perlfunc" to be extremely useful when I want to get at
something quick, so I agree that Python manpages would be a nice addition.

- John Landahl / jpl at digex.net