Documentation

[Derek Martin <derekm mediaone net>]

Here's a novel concept for gnome documentation:

GNOME NEEDS MAN PAGES.

Wether anyone likes it or not, man pages are still the #1 source of
documentation for commands on all Unix platforms, including Linux and
FreeBSD, though even more so on non-OSS Unix variants.

The easiest way to find a command that does X is still

  man -k X

But this doesn't help if you're looking for a gnome application.  I use
gnome and the last thing I want to do to find a command that does what I
want is to load up a bloated GUI application, and hunt through
documentation for commands that may or may not be what I'm looking for. 
The MAN command does the wading for me.  But only if there are MAN
PAGES.

Actually I'm not entirely sure what kinds of documentation the gnome
help browser offers, because I never use it so I took it off all my
menus etc, and I can't figure out how to start it from the command line,
SINCE THERE'S NO MAN PAGE.

C'mon guys, I CAN'T be the only one that's ever made this request...

I'm not even saying you need to have long, ultra-detailed man pages, but
they ought to exist.

Hell, I'll even offer to write some.  But someone will have to tell me
how to start the help browser so I can find out what the names of the
damn programs are, and what their syntax is, if that's even provided in
the help browser...

Sorry to sound so negative, it's been a shitty day and I'm already
pissed off. I think you guys are doing a great job.  But I still think
we need man pages.


-- 
Derek D. Martin      |  UNIX System Administrator
derekm@mediaone.net  |  dmartin@ne.arris-i.com