XPost: alt.comp.os.windows-10   
   From: nospam@needed.invalid   
      
   On Thu, 10/30/2025 6:16 AM, MikeS wrote:   
   > On 29/10/2025 21:57, Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:   
   >>   
   >> View nicely-typeset PDF version:   
   >>   
   >>      gunzip -c $(man -w bash) | groff -ktman -Tpdf | okular -   
   >>   
   > I thought you were advocating Linux as a nice, easy-to-use alternative to   
   nasty, user-unfriendly Windows ????????????????   
      
   Open a second terminal, do man bash, it uses "less",   
   you can use your pageup and pagedown keys. No need for a PDF.   
   You keep the second terminal with the man page, at your elbow,   
   as you craft a command based on the content of the man page.   
      
   The PDF has the benefit of search, the search under "less" would be   
   potentially less friendly (if available at all). There is an advantage   
   to having a PDF, but we should not be reduced to making them manually   
   and on demand. If you're going to do one PDF, you should do the   
   whole blasted tree and get it over with.   
      
   The reason the manual information in a package is "not expanded"   
   into a plethora of formats, is space considerations. Nothing   
   prevents a distro from "expanding" every thing under   
   the sun in there (as packages are added via Synaptic).   
   But, they don't typically do that.   
      
   Some OSes, keep all their utility descriptions in a tool   
   that serves all of them and has a GUI. Again, taking   
   a little more space for the tool, the fonts associated   
   with good presentation, and so on. The one I was thinking of,   
   isn't in the list, and is from another point in time.   
      
      https://itsfoss.com/man-pages-like-tools/   
      
   If you add a gazillion files to Linux... slash ends up   
   having a file count like Windows. And some of the brute   
   force searches on Linux are slow enough as it is.   
      
   Linux has "locate" (mlocate pkg?) and "sudo updatedb" to keep up-to-date   
   file location capabilities.   
      
   The limits of not-nice, are like the Kaspersky provided   
   Gentoo on their rescue CD. All documentation is removed,   
   and man xxx will find no man executable even. That's how they   
   could deliver a distro -- but "some sense of taste" keeps the   
   man tree around for the user.   
      
   A similar thing would be a "games" tree. A distro does not   
   have to provide one, and the "games" there would be for   
   historical reasons rather than entertainment value. In places   
   of business, when they distribute a master image of something,   
   the "games" are stripped off.   
      
      Paul   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)