Re: coreutils FAQ link in manpages and/or --help output

[Assaf Gordon]

Hi,

Bernhard Voelker wrote, On 02/25/2013 10:58 AM:
> On 02/25/2013 03:53 PM, Ondrej Oprala wrote:
>> to reduce the amount of questions about date, sort and anything 
>> multibyte-related, I think
>> it'd be a good idea to add a link to the coreutils FAQ to the man pages 
>> (and/or --help output), maybe something like
>> "Report TOOL bugs to address@hidden but please make sure the 
>> behaviour is not listed in FAQ: link"
>> What do you think?
> 
> I'd not be surprised if this had already been discussed before.
> However, I like the idea, but it would be best if we had nice
> translations for that FAQ page.
> 

If changing the general "help" message (I assume from "emit_ancillary_info()"), 
perhaps consider another change:

Add a line (preferably on top) that would point to "address@hidden" in addition 
to "address@hidden",
saying something like:
 "For common usage questions, see <FAQ>"
and then
 "Send usage questions to address@hidden"
and only then print the existing:
 "Report sort bugs to address@hidden"

This will (hopefully?) prevent those cases where people send general questions 
and open a new bug, forcing someone to respond with the boiler-plate answer "by 
sending an email to this mailing list, you've opened a bug-report, and I'm 
closing it".

There's already a link saying:
 "General help using GNU software: <http://www.gnu.org/gethelp/>"
But this page is not very helpful for a non-expert who just wants to get help 
about a specific GNU coreutils program...


Just my two cents,
 -gordon