GNU bug report logs - #18428
coreutils binary breaks coreutils documentation

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Message #37 received at 18428 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Michael Stone <mstone <at> debian.org>
To: Bob Proulx <bob <at> proulx.com>, 760861 <at> bugs.debian.org
Cc: 18428 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: Bug#760861: bug#18428: coreutils binary breaks coreutils
 documentation
Date: Tue, 9 Sep 2014 08:51:18 -0400

On Mon, Sep 08, 2014 at 06:10:35PM -0600, Bob Proulx wrote:
>But I think in recent years the install-info problems have been fixed.
>Perhaps we don't need to do any of this anymore?  Or perhaps finally
>getting to the canonical (FILENAME)NODE-WITHIN-FILE form we have
>finally arrived at the end and should stop there.

The real solution is to stop pretending that the info documentation is 
useful. We get a lot of bug reports about the man pages & help output, 
not so many about the info docs. It could be because the info docs are 
perfect, I suspect it's because they're rarely consulted. Sometimes we 
can point to the info doc and close a man page bug with a satisfied 
sense of "they should have read the documentation". But I'm just not 
sure that documentation that seems to exist solely to win a fight over 
whether behavior is documented is actually helpful. Maybe point people 
at https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/ ? Even 
better would be if it were interactive. E.g., the postgresql project has 
some really nice online docs per-version which allow people to add 
comments: http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.3/interactive/index.html

Mike Stone

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