Re: Why I can't use `info' in emacs?

[Robert Thorpe]

Giorgos Keramidas wrote:
> On 18 Dec 2006 03:51:43 -0800,
> "Robert Thorpe" <rthorpe@realworldtech.com> wrote:
> >Giorgos Keramidas wrote:
> >>On 15 Dec 2006 06:57:13 -0800,
> >>"Robert Thorpe" <rthorpe@realworldtech.com> wrote:
> >>>> ,----
> >>>> | PRINTF(3)    Linux Programmer's Manual    <snip>
> >>>>
> >>>> Surely the man pages are superior in this instance for a programmer?
> >>>
> >>> It depends.  [...]
> >>> The man-page is quite thorough in this case, but it is a little
> >>> confusing in one respect, It says "Linux Programmer's Manual".  I
> >>> have no idea why it says this, since printf is provided by Glibc.
> >>
> >> That's because man pages are organized in sections.  The section title
> >> for manpages in section 3 is "Linux Programmer's Manual" on Linux.  On
> >> other systems, section 3 may have a slightly different title.  Here, for
> >> instance, on a FreeBSD system, the title is:
> >>
> >> PRINTF(3)             FreeBSD Library Functions Manual            PRINTF(3)
> >
> > I don't agree.  Individual man pages should have titles, not just
> > sections of the manual.
>
> I think there may have been a moderate amount of confusion here.  I thought
> you didn't know why the header says "Linux Programmer's Manual", not that
> you knew all about manpage sections but you disagreed with the content of
> the text.

Fair point.

> The most commonly used packages for writing manpages are "man" and "mandoc"
> these days.  They both provide ways to set the manpage header to a
> package-specific string, so if you don't like the Glibc manpage headers,
> then maybe it's a good idea to contact teh Glibc authors :)

Glibc doesn't contain man-pages.  The man pages were written mainly by
the people who document the linux kernel, that's why it says "Linux
Programmer's Manual".  This is an overhang from the days when Linux
used Libc6 which was maintained by Linux kernel folks.  It's confusing
because they don't maintain that part of the system anymore.

> Yep.  Agreed 100%.
>
> > The FreeBSD entry is entirely correct, since FreeBSD's libc is
> > maintained with FreeBSD.
>
> Since it is up to the manpage author to set the header to something like
> "GNU C Library Functions Manual", or even "SDL API Reference", even in
> FreeBSD some manpages have the 'wrong' header, by your criteria :-/

Yep.  It's a fairly common problem, not restricted to manpages either.