Keep in mind that the apropos command only searches man pages, so I strongly support keeping them around and creating them (even if only from --help) when they're missing.
2010/2/27 Josselin Mouette <j...@debian.org> > Hi, > > currently policy §12.1 mandates that “each program, utility, and > function should have an associated manual page”. However, the more I > stomp on bug reports about manual pages, the less I am convinced of > their usefulness for GUI programs. > > GUI applications usually take only a few simple command-line options, > and more importantly, when you use a modern development framework, these > options will always be documented correctly with the --help switch. > Manual pages, OTOH, are not maintained properly by upstream developers. > > I think it is a waste of time to write manual pages that won’t be > maintained upstream, and that won’t contain more useful information than > --help. The purpose of a manual page is to document precisely the > behavior of a program, and for GUI applications there is usually an > associated GUI documentation instead. > > Therefore I propose that we drop the requirement of a manual page if > these conditions are met: > * the program requires graphical interaction with the user, and is > not meant to be used from a script; > * the command-line switches are properly documented with a --help > option. > > For extra points, we could agree on a way to generate manual pages > automatically, either at installation time or on the fly, using > help2man. > > Any comments before I submit a bug against the policy? > > Cheers, > -- > .''`. Josselin Mouette > : :' : > `. `' “I recommend you to learn English in hope that you in > `- future understand things” -- Jörg Schilling > -- David Coe +1 410 489 9521
