Hello,
Quote:
Originally Posted by TerryP
Some manual pages are worse then others but most are fairly good in OpenBSDs case.
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Some manual pages are great! They are so good that some reference books will use them almost verbatim to describe the program. Others are utterly abysmal. They may be little more than a description of what a program does (if you're lucky).
I recall one I read recently (can't recall off the top of my head which one) that gave you a list of 2-3 options (out of who knows how many), but none of them did what I needed. The program doesn't run with the proper arguments, but the documentation doesn't tell you what those arguments are. Am I supposed to read the programmers mind as to how they designed the program?
Documentation is a royal pain to do (at least that's how I feel), but it is on of the most necessary things a program needs - after all, if the user doesn't know _how_ to use the program, they won't use it at all, no matter how good it is. Documentation (both in the form of source comments and manpages) is a duty and obligation on the part of the programmer(s).