Re: info info; man info (documentation about info)

[Dave Kemper]

On 1/7/23, Arsen Arsenović <arsen@aarsen.me> wrote:
> Alejandro Colomar <alx.manpages@gmail.com> writes:
>> How about adding the following:
>>
>>      For readers more familiar with manual pages, it might be interesting
>>      to pipe info(1) through less(1):
>>
>>              info info | less
>
> This suffers from decreased navigability, though, as links (xrefs and
> menu entries especially) become non-clickable.

That's a judgment call.  I find it more navigable despite that
restriction, in part because the entire manual is available on one
(virtual) page.  Admittedly I'm also more familiar with "less" than
with the "info" interface, but "less" can be used to browse any file
or pipeline output, whereas "info" can be used to browse only info
manuals, so the "less" interface is by far the more useful one to
master.  This is in line with the Unix philosophy: use combinations of
simple tools to do complex things.

> That said, that could be done, if others agree,

The important thing, I think, is that nowhere does the man page
mention info's behavior when its output is piped or redirected.
"info" being interactive, it probably doesn't even occur to most users
*to* pipe or redirect it (it certainly didn't to me until someone else
pointed out that trick), and none of the examples in the EXAMPLES
section take advantage of this.  A single sentence about this in the
DESCRIPTION, plus a single example illustrating it in EXAMPLES, would
let users deduce the "| less" behavior even if that was not the
specific example used (though it does seem the most obvious).