What use are these (rpm) entries in 'man'?

[Robert P. J. Day]

On Thu, 1 Nov 2007, Chris G wrote:

> On Thu, Nov 01, 2007 at 11:45:58AM -0400, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> > On Thu, 1 Nov 2007, Chris G wrote:
> >
> > > When I do a "man -k <xxxx>" on my Fedora 7 system to search for
> > > documentation about something I get quite a few responses which have
> > > "(rpm)" as the manual section.  These seem to be of little use becuase
> > > there isn't an actual corresponding man page as far as I can see.
> > >
> > > For example if I say "man -k doc" (not a very sensible idea given the
> > > amount of output it generates!) at the end of the list I see:-
> > >
> > >     tiff2pdf             (1)  - convert a TIFF image to a PDF document ugetrlimit [undocumented] (2)  - undocumented system calls
> > >     xml2po               (1)  - program to create a PO-template file from a DocBook XML file and merge it back into a (translated) XML file
> > >     xmlwf                (1)  - Determines if an XML document is well-formed
> > >     xorg-x11-docs       (rpm) - X.Org X11 documentation
> > >     yelp                (rpm) - A system documentation reader from the Gnome project
> > >
> > > Now "man tiff2pdf", "man xml2po" and "man xmlwf" produce some useful
> > > (?) output but "man xorg-x11-docs" and "man yelp" just say "No
> > > manual entry for <xxxx>".
> > >
> > >
> > > So what is the point of these (rpm) entries?  Do they somehow
> > > indicate that there is some sort of documentation there, if so how
> > > do I get at it?
> >
> > $ man rpm yelp
> >
> No, that just returns the man page for rpm and after that says "No
> manual entry for yelp".
>
> The "section number" field to the rpm command only works if it's an
> integer.

not always:

  $ man glob
  $ man n glob

rday
-- 
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Robert P. J. Day
Linux Consulting, Training and Annoying Kernel Pedantry
Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA

http://crashcourse.ca
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