Re: sort - specifying sort fields/keys.

[Bob Proulx]

cga2000 wrote:
> Bob Proulx wrote:
> > The man pages are great for quick reference of major features.  But
> > the primary documentation for most GNU software is in the info pages.
> 
> Sometimes I wish the humongous gnu/screen man page were available in a
> more clearly structured format like texinfo.. :-)

That one is a little long!  :-)

On the side of the good examples I think the GNU 'make' texinfo manual
is a good example of a well written user manual.  It really is much
more effective than a man page.

> But as to the man pages being seen as a quick reference .. I would tend
> to disagree .. that's more the role of the --help option.

Many projects generate the man pages from the --help output using
help2man.  So in those cases there won't be any difference between the
two.  The advantage is that man pages will be available when otherwise
nothing would be available.

> But in any case, for hobbyists like myself who pretty much live on
> borrowed time .. it can be really frustrating to have to spend more time
> and energy hunting for the adhoc doc than actually reading it (surely
> you've heard of the debian/gnu wars re: doc licensing, and its impact on
> the availability of recent texinfo docs in .deb format  right?)

It is a tragedy that the two largest and most active free software
communities are on opposing sides of this issue.

> So I guessed right .. --color=auto, I mean .. Seem to be getting the
> hang of it!

Yeah!

> BTW .. those awk one-liners that you helped me write a while ago really
> do a great job!  

Glad to be of help.

Bob