Re: man-intro

[Oliver Corff]

Well, isn't this a good reason to emphasize the difference between man
and help?

Not finding "cd" in a man page means that it is a shell internal; this
could be stated as an explicite reason why it doesn't come with its own
manpage.

Perhaps a note of caution to the novice reader could be added in
man-intro by mentioning that a small number of utilities do not come
with their associated manpage, but require --help for an overview of
invocation, arguments and parameters, while other "subsystems" (I think
of TeX and friends) come with their own, extensive documentation.

The last thought that comes into my mind is that, from a novice user's
point of view, a huge number of man pages are written from the insider's
perspective. You don't know how to use utility x? The manpage doesn't
make sense. You *do* know that utility? Manpage gives you all the
information you ever dreamt of. An introductory statement to the whys
and hows of a given utility (in ideally one phrase) can be helpful. But
this is not a *roff topic; just my comment.

Have a nice Sunday and Pentecost,

Oliver.


On 5/22/21 11:42 PM, Ulrich Lauther wrote:
> On Sat, May 22, 2021 at 08:18:41PM +0200, Oliver Corff wrote:
> > "man cd", on the other hand, opens the bash built-in command *man page*,
> > which, at least on my system is a plethora of text to read (and digest).
> on my sytem (ubunto mate) "man cd" results in "No manual entry for cd".
>
> > Just my 2cents,
>          ulrich
--
Dr. Oliver Corff
-- China Consultant --
Wittelsbacherstr. 5A
D-10707 Berlin
Tel.: +49-30-8572726-0
Fax : +49-30-8572726-2
mailto:oliver.corff@email.de