Re: expand and unexpand man pages' "see also" section don't mention each other

[Jim Meyering]

Dan Jacobson <address@hidden> wrote:
>>> Expand(1) and unexpand(1) man pages' "SEE ALSO" section don't mention each 
>>> other.
> Jim> Thanks for reporting that.
> Jim> If you'd like it to be fixed, then I suggest you send a patch.
> Jim> You'll probably want to modify man/expand.x and man/unexpand.x.
>
> Does that mean if I take no further action, it is the same as if I
> never sent the report?

No.  But realize that if everyone does what you do, then some good
suggestions may be delayed indefinitely.  I have only limited time.
If for every small suggested documentation change, I end up taking
the time to write a patch, test it, and write a ChangeLog entry,
even if it's a small and simple change, then I'll have less time
for other tasks.  However, if a few people (especially frequent
contributors) help out by making their changes easier to apply,
*those* changes will be a lot more likely to go in sooner and with
less time/effort.  Sending a few patches goes a long way toward
increasing good will from maintainers.

Even adding an item to a TODO file takes some time.
When that amount of time is comparable to what is required to
fix the actual problem, then it's harder to justify adding
the item to TODO.

I do appreciate even small bug reports, but it's much better
when a documentation-related report comes with a suggested patch.
This is especially relevant when the report involves parts of the
`man' pages (like SEE ALSO) that aren't automatically generated
from --help output.

Here's what I would have appreciated receiving from you:

[ To create the following `diff' output, I just copied the original,
  unmodified file aside, giving it the .orig suffix, then modified
  the other and ran `diff -u expand.x.orig expand.x > FILE'. ]
---------

2003-04-10  Dan Jacobson  <address@hidden>

        * man/unexpand.x: Add `SEE ALSO' reference to expand.
        * man/expand.x: Add `SEE ALSO' reference to unexpand.

--- unexpand.x.orig     2003-04-10 09:20:11.000000000 +0200
+++ unexpand.x  2003-04-10 09:20:01.000000000 +0200
@@ -2,3 +2,5 @@
 unexpand \- convert spaces to tabs
 [DESCRIPTION]
 .\" Add any additional description here
+[SEE ALSO]
+expand(1)

--- expand.x.orig       2003-04-10 09:18:44.000000000 +0200
+++ expand.x    2003-04-10 09:18:26.000000000 +0200
@@ -2,3 +2,5 @@
 expand \- convert tabs to spaces
 [DESCRIPTION]
 .\" Add any additional description here
+[SEE ALSO]
+unexpand(1)