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

[Ondrej Oprala]

On 02/25/2013 05:12 PM, Assaf Gordon wrote:
> 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
Thank you all for your replies,
I think reducing the number of links in help output is a great idea;
at the very least we should put the coreutils help link(or FAQ link) 
before the bug-coreutils
address, so it's the first thing the users see. There's no help (apart 
from the general GNU
help) mentioned there now and I think users (even offline users) should 
be made more
aware that some special cases may exist for the coreutils package.

Thanks,
Ondrej