Re: man page symlinks on symlinked binary
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On Wed, 19 Sep 2007 18:38:41 -0300
Martin Marques <martin(a)bugs.unl.edu.ar> wrote:
Lamont Peterson escribió:
>
> I honestly do not understand how what you are saying here helps in
> any way to answer the question being discussed in this thread. Of
> course it's best for the users to read the manual. That's not the
> point. We're talking about how to help people find the manual when
> the name has changed from something (like cdrecord, which prompted
> this thread in the first place) that has been around a long time.
>
> Of course I saw the item you quoted/mentioned in the wodim(1) man
> page. It doesn't help anyone who doesn't know that wodim is what
> they want because cdrecord no longer exists on their systems (in
> the distribution).
OK, better: add at the beginning of the wodim man page that "wodim is
a fork of cdrecord". How about that?
I think the wodim(1) man page already does an adequate job of explaining this, though I do
like your idea of a very concise piece of text at the beginning of the man page, just to
make things more clear.
Still, the issue we're discussing in this thread isn't about problems with the
wodim(1) man page. It's about the problem that there is no cdrecord(1) man page
anymore. Since there is no cdrecord(1) man page, running "man cdrecord" just
like users may have been doing for 5-10 years now, will not work.
However, they still have a "cdrecord" command (as a symlink to
"wodim"), so they would now be frustrated and not know where to look for the
"missing man page to cdrecord".
So, what this thread was trying to discuss was the idea that we need to do something for
commands that still exist as symlinks as a convenience for users who are used to those
commands and for scripts that might be using them, too.
My suggestion was to not create a symlink to, or a copy of, the wodim(1) man page in order
to make "man cdrecord" work again, but to instead create a bona-fide cdrecord(1)
man page with content such as "This isn't the command you want, anymore. You now
want wodim(1)".
- --
Lamont Peterson <lamont(a)gurulabs.com>
Senior Instructor
Guru Labs, L.C. [ http://www.GuruLabs.com/ ]
NOTE: All messages from this email address should be digitally signed with my
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