Re: [Groff] manpages, manpages everywhere

[Meg McRoberts]

Yes, man pages seem to be an inherently conservative
institution.  Over the years I've heard a lot of people
suggest ways to improve their usability, but ultimately
it comes down to the fact that what is familiar is considered
most usable...

> Except for changes in font, indents, use of rules and tables,
> and so on -- minor decorative style changes, really --
> there's really not that much difference between any of them.

The "issues" I know about are Synopsis versus Syntax and See Also
versus Reference.  Then there are arguments about whether options/
arguments should be presented in a list and whether the list should
be alphabetized or "logical".

> Now I'm looking for any case studies on the net, although
> Google hasn't been especially friendly this time. It's times
> like this I wish I'd pocketed those documentation-related
> BSTJ reprints that my co-workers loaned me back in 1984
> or so. :-)

Check out http://osr5doc.ca.caldera.com:457/refhome.html -- those
are the OpenServer manpages which got quite a bit of work in the
early to mid-90's.  You can scoot around (start from www.sco.com/support/docs)
and find the UnixWare pages as well.  There are all written in "sco.mac," a
customized version of the -mm macros -- in fact, just about all the docs are
written with those macros.

meg

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