Re: sleep args

[Eric Blake]

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According to Dan Jacobson on 6/24/2006 3:59 PM:
> 
> EB> That's pretty clear to me.  The --help output (and thus man pages)
> EB> are intentionally less verbose, since GNU projects favor info
> EB> documentation.
> 
> well I'm a man man... usually good enough than deep delving into info
> volumes.

man pages are intended as terse summaries, not detailed descriptions.  The
GNU Coding Standards state that man pages are optional, but info pages are
not.  So for coreutils, the man pages are basically snapshots of --help
output (in other words, you will learn as much about sleep by typing
'sleep --help' as you will by typing 'man sleep').

> Plus nowadays on Debian sid
> $ info sleep
> gets the man page. One needs insider info,
> $ info coreutils sleep
> to see the actual info page.

That is an info limitation that has been previously discussed on this
list.  One of the reasons that coreutils does not recommend 'info
coreutils <utility>' in its man pages is that info takes you to the wrong
page when you do 'info coreutils tr'.

> 
>>> And mention what is a GNU extension, and what is portable.
> 
> EB> You know, you could have done this, and provided a patch that
> EB> specifies what you want to see, rather than just a complaint:
> 
> But I don't know the details.
> 
> EB>   * coreutils.texi (sleep invocation): Document that accepting
> 
> OK, thanks.

You do realize that my patch was to the info pages, and not to the man
page?  Get used to it - for good or bad, man pages are second class
citizens in GNU projects.

- --
Life is short - so eat dessert first!

Eric Blake             address@hidden
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