Splitting the man page (was: Re: [MEncoder-users] aac encoding with lavc)

[Rich Felker]

On Thu, Sep 28, 2006 at 03:46:35PM +0200, Guillaume POIRIER wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On 9/28/06, Fredrik Eriksson <feffese at yahoo.se> wrote:
> >
> >On 28-09-2006, at 11:56, Guillaume POIRIER wrote:
> 
> 
> >> On 9/28/06, Fredrik Eriksson <feffese at yahoo.se> wrote:
> >>> On 28-09-2006, at 10:32, Guillaume POIRIER wrote:
> >>> > On 9/27/06, Fredrik Eriksson <feffese at yahoo.se> wrote:
> 
> [..]
> 
> 
> >> In any case, yes, the issue of splitting the manpage has been brought
> >> up many times in the past, and hasn't been done for different reasons:
> >> mainly because nobody cared to implement a way to do it, and also
> >> because no satisfary idea has been provided either.
> >>
> >
> >Then i just have to at least come up with another idea :)
> >
> >mplayer and mencoder needs separate man pages, options that applies
> >to both programs could either be in both (easier for users), or just
> >in the mplayer page (easier to maintain):
> >mplayer
> >mencoder
> >
> >there are tons of filters, they deserve to be in a separate man page:
> >mplayer_filters
> >
> >it could also be easier to have the codec specific options in
> >separate man pages:
> >mencoder_lame
> >mencoder_lavc
> >mencoder_xvid
> >mencoder_x264
> >etc.
> >
> >it's quite bad if you can't add document all features in the man
> >pages because it's to big, it makes us poor users confused and
> >prevents us from using the full power of the great tools you provide.
> 
> >I can't promise anything but if we only can agree to how the man
> >pages should be I might be able to assist with the split.
> 
> I like your idear. even though it's a big ugly and non-intuitive to
> have man pages that don't correspond to an actual binary.... but after
> all, the same issue exists for C man pages, so I think it's okay.
> 
> Let's see what The GodFather of doc team will think about it.

This has come up many times before and I'm STRONGLY against splitting
the man page. Having it all in one file makes it trivial to find
anything you want with the / key. Multiple files means you have to go
back and forth between multiple man commands. The only people who
benefit from splitting it are people too stupid to learn to use their
pager...

Rich