Man pages and info pages

[Tim Harig]

On 2010-11-03, Teemu Likonen <tlikonen at iki.fi> wrote:
> * 2010-11-02 19:36 (UTC), Tim Harig wrote:
>> I thoroughly agree. The default info viewers are quite possibly the
>> most counterintuitive programs I have ever encountered. I never did
>> bother to learn how to use them. I instead installed the more
>> intuitive pinfo program.
>
> It seems that we only agree on the part that I explicitly wrote about:
> people are less familiar with info browsers than "less" pager. I didn't
> mean to imply any reasons why this might be the case. I think "info"

The reason is really simple.  Less' interface derives from more.  Less and
more have a long history on the *nix platform and many programs have
emulated their interface.

When the GNU folk decided to clone *nix they decided that they knew better
and simply decided to create their own interfaces.  I guess they figured
that everybody loves to have to learn multiple varying interfaces to use
different programs.

> browser is intuitive and easy to use. The basic commands:
[SNIP]
>     Arrow keys, page up, page down keys work as usual.

Actually, the left arrow key does not work at all intuitively.  One would
expect that it should go back to the previous page as it would in lynx,
etc.  It does not.

By tradition 'n' and 'p' are broken for scrolling in a page.  'b' is often
used in place of p but that seems to take one back to the top of the page.

The s key for a search is another example that has already been discussed.

> What's counter-intuitive in it?

Maybe its intutitive to an emacs user; but, I find pinfo's default key
bindings much easier.

>>> With the text terminal info browser called "info" as well as Emacs'
>>> info browser you can use command "s" (stands for "search"). It
>>> prompts for a regexp pattern to search in the whole document,
>>> including subsections etc.
>>
>> Right, pinfo offers this as well; but, then you have to figure out
>> where in the nodes that the search has taken you and how to navigate
>> from that node to find additional information that you may need.
>
> I usually return to the top node with "t" command or go one or more
> levels up in the tree with "u" command. The first line in the window
> tells where I am.

That assumes that you understand the node structure used or that you don't
mind returning to the top and having to re-walk the node structure every
time that you want to find new piece of information.

I already discussed that just finding the info pages can be difficult
because you have to know that they are stored under the package name and
that multiple pages can be used for man page structure.