Re: coreutils/man/rm.x - fails to mention POSIX "Refuse to remove path/. and path/.., as well as `.' and `..'

[Arsen Arsenović]

James Feeney <james@nurealm.net> writes:

> On Sun, 2023-09-24 at 02:49 +0200, Arsen Arsenović wrote:
>> 
>> Many standards come and go.
>> 
>> Note that I agree that a better info viewer (and a better info on-disk
>> format) are necessary, but groff -Tutf8 -mtty-char | less -R is not
>> better.  It lacks the ability to navigate or reflow (the latter '.info'
>> also lacks today, unfortunately).
>> 
>> The solution to this is not to downgrade to man-pages, but to make the
>> 'info' format better (the source material, i.e. the .texi, for that is
>> already there) and to provide a better browser.  ...
>
> Wikipedia tells us that "The Unix Programmer's Manual was first published on
> November 3, 1971. The first actual man pages were written by Dennis Ritchie 
> and
> Ken Thompson at the insistence of their manager Doug McIlroy in 1971."
>
> GNU Info is a de facto documentation standard for UNIX-like operating systems
> in the same way that GNU Hurd is a de facto kernel standard for UNIX-like
> operating systems - which is to say, not at all.  Forcing the user to "jump
> through hoops" - "Full documentation ... available locally via: info ..." - to
> gain a reasonable overview of the coreutils system commands is little more 
> than
> a juvenile disparaging of the traditional Unix Manual.
>
> As for Info itself, I will always use "zless
> /usr/share/info/coreutils.info.gz", rather than "info '(coreutils) rm
> invocation'", just to avoid dealing with info's arcane navigation commands.

Try 'info --vi-keys' or pinfo.

> Arguments about the de facto documentation standard for UNIX-like operating
> systems is not going to be resolved here and now, and adding a couple of
> sentences to coreutils/man/rm.x is not a big ask.


-- 
Arsen Arsenović

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