[NTLUG:Discuss] SuSE 9 or 9.1 PATH environment changes after su

[Terry]

On Sat, 11 Sep 2004 23:44:25 -0500, Kevin Brannen <kbrannen at pwhome.com> wrote:
> Val Harris wrote:
> 
> > Terry wrote:
> >
> >> On Fri, 10 Sep 2004 23:36:30 -0500, Kevin Brannen
> >> <kbrannen at pwhome.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>>
> >>> <soapbox>
> >>> And like so many other places, GNU wants you to go read info files to
> >>> find out how the command really works because they're too lazy to make
> >>> proper man pages (or is it arrogant because they think "info" is
> >>> better?).  A pox on them for this stupidity!
> >>> </soapbox>
> >>>
> >>
> >> Maybe one of us concerned citicizens [/users] shoud re-write the man
> >> file for them.  (Maybe they're just busy, not lazy).
> >> </soapboz>  :)
> >>
> >
> > I gotta' agree with Kevin on this one!  Info readable files are
> > generated from Texinfo source.  Even if the world did need another
> > markup language, I have to wonder why the inventors of the info
> > reader felt we needed another presentation language.  Why not
> > generate man pages directly from the Texinfo source?
> 
> 
> Naw, they aren't lazy.  They purposefully don't want to do it.  I forget
> which one, but there is/was a man page that specifically stated that the
> man page for that command was out of date and they didn't want to update
> it, to go see the info page instead, and that if they took the time to
> fix the man page they wouldn't have time to write any software.  *That*
> is what sent me over the edge about info pages, beside the fact that you
> seem to need to know emacs to use the info command well and I'm a vi
> guy. :-)  Fortunately, tkinfo now exists and makes them semi-usable, as
> does "info topic > file" then looking at the file; but that's still not
> the same as a good man page (at least to me).
> 
> As to why they did that, IIRC, GNU started working on info pages because
> they wanted something with hyperlink type capability, and that was
> before HTML was available (or at least widely available).  So they tried
> to create a new standard that was better than man pages, from Texinfo as
> Val points out.
> 
> I still think they made the wrong decision.  Man pages are a reasonable
> standard in the Unix world.  I have thought about trying to fix some of
> them and submitting them to the GNU folks, but I just haven't gotten
> over their statement.  (Yeh, a flaw of mine. :-)
> 

I should admit that I didn't know about the controversy, (info vs man
pages), and would also like to express my preference for man pages,
they're much easier to negotiate, IMO, but then I'm a "vi guy" as
well.