when do you usually use the man page for a complex command line tool to answer a question you have? (like git, openssl, rsync, curl, etc)
(edit: no need to say "i use --help then man")
i'm very curious about everyone who says "I'd look there first", if I want to figure out how to do something new I think I'll usually google how to do it rather than look at the man page, and then maybe later look at the man page to look up the details
(I've gotten enough of these answers:
- "I like that man pages don't require changing context"
- "with the man page I know I have the right version of the docs")
@b0rk One of the best features of the older man pages was a keyword-in-context index. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_Word_in_Context for an example.
If I thought of a word, I could see where it was used in man pages, and ONLY in man pages. Low noise, high granularity.
I'm tempted to make one as Appendix B of a small reference book I'm writing. I bet I can use my concordance file and grep for each of the words, reporting chapter instead of page in on-line formats.
Julia Evans
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