On Wed, Mar 03, 2010 at 07:17:14PM +0100, Yves-Alexis Perez wrote: > On 28/02/2010 01:32, Ben Finney wrote: > > Josselin Mouette <j...@debian.org> writes: > > > >> > Yes, I overall agree with your arguments. However having it in the > >> > policy means we get bug reports about manual pages and have to deal > >> > with them, while they are not the primary source of documentation for > >> > command-line options. > > If manpages were useful only for documenting command-line options, this > > would be a valid point. As has been pointed out, though, manpages for > > programs are useful for much more than that. > > > > But that's why he doesn't propose to forbid manpages for GUI programs, > just to not have them mandatory (well, agreed, it's a “should”). For > programs where there's no point in having a manpage (and only them) he > proposes to drop the “should” requirement, that's all. > > That doesn't prevent motivated people/upstream to provide manpages, it > just spares some time for maintainers. I have few cases in Xfce of such > programs (like all the xfce4-*-settings).
My two cents: I have seen manpages in Debian that basically claim that "This program does not have a useful manpage, for the information look into bla-bla-bla..." I think that even having such a man page is better than not having one at all. Just because it clearly indicates where to look for additional information. In fact, a group of related programs that have information about them shared in a common place or have the same means to get this information (like --help command line option) could symlink to a single man file. -- Stanislav -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100304004148.ga22...@kaiba.homelan
