Re: (man|info) pages and --help

[C de-Avillez]

On Fri, 18 Sep 2009 17:34:31 +0200
Jim Meyering <address@hidden> wrote:

> Pádraig Brady wrote:
> 
> > Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
> >>    > Is there anyone who's unaware that --help doesn't provide
> >>    > complete documentation?
> >> 
> >>    I would not expect anyone to *not* know that help output is
> >>    abridged.  But I would rather have them go straight into 'info'
> >>    than wasting time on 'man', only to be redirected to 'info'.
> >> 
> >>    Usually one looks at the '--help' output first. If we redirect
> >> on 'man', why not there?
> >> 
> >> Because man pages are secondary on GNU systems, the offical spot
> >> has always been info.  The redirection is only for convience for
> >> old timers who still use man.
> >
> > While that may be the official line, practically nobody reads info
> > pages, and if they do it's indirectly through google.
> >
> > I'd vote for removing the translation help line unconditionally
> > (I notice it's not mentioned in man pages) and replace with:
> >
> > For complete documentation, run: info coreutils '$cmd invocation'
> 
> Seconded.

Is this, then, good?

From c16d6e93cdc94e890ad653d4caa994ea4c315a50 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: C de-Avillez <address@hidden>
Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2009 12:16:50 -0500
Subject: [PATCH] --help: link to 'info' for complete docs
 * src/system.h:
   - take out the translation line
   - add a reference to 'info' for complete documentation

---
 src/system.h |   13 ++-----------
 1 files changed, 2 insertions(+), 11 deletions(-)

diff --git a/src/system.h b/src/system.h
index a15c298..1ecdcff 100644
--- a/src/system.h
+++ b/src/system.h
@@ -646,17 +646,8 @@ emit_bug_reporting_address (void)
           PACKAGE_NAME, PACKAGE);
   fputs (_("General help using GNU software: <http://www.gnu.org/gethelp/>\n"),
          stdout);
-
-  if (hard_locale (LC_MESSAGES))
-    {
-      /* TRANSLATORS: Replace LANG_CODE in this URL with your language code
-         <http://translationproject.org/team/LANG_CODE.html> to form one of
-         the URLs at http://translationproject.org/team/.  Otherwise, replace
-         the entire URL with your translation team's email address.  */
-      printf (_("Report %s translation bugs to "
-                "<http://translationproject.org/team/>\n"),
-                last_component (program_name));
-    }
+  printf (_("For complete documentation, run: info coreutils '%s 
invocation'\n"),
+          last_component (program_name));
 }
 
 #include "inttostr.h"
-- 
1.6.3.3

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