I always thought of writing a bash utility called realman
which would explain commands like in the man pages but instead of laying out the commands in alphabetical order by the options the command has, it would simply just give examples the average user would need.
Some commands do give examples but as the man pages are constructed by different people there is no central control on what a man page should look like readability wise.
Take a description of man
as an example
NAME
man - an interface to the on-line reference manuals
SYNOPSIS
man [-C file] [-d] [-D] [--warnings[=warnings]] [-R encoding] [-L locale] [-m system[,...]] [-M path] [-S list] [-e extension] [-i|-I] [--regex|--wildcard]
[--names-only] [-a] [-u] [--no-subpages] [-P pager] [-r prompt] [-7] [-E encoding] [--no-hyphenation] [--no-justification] [-p string] [-t] [-T[device]]
[-H[browser]] [-X[dpi]] [-Z] [[section] page ...] ...
man -k [apropos options] regexp ...
man -K [-w|-W] [-S list] [-i|-I] [--regex] [section] term ...
man -f [whatis options] page ...
man -l [-C file] [-d] [-D] [--warnings[=warnings]] [-R encoding] [-L locale] [-P pager] [-r prompt] [-7] [-E encoding] [-p string] [-t] [-T[device]]
[-H[browser]] [-X[dpi]] [-Z] file ...
man -w|-W [-C file] [-d] [-D] page ...
man -c [-C file] [-d] [-D] page ...
man [-hV]
It's totally overkill. My man page would read...
Its a program gives you more details of a command.
eg. "man bash" would explain more about the command "bash"
Having to read through all the options of a command to find that one option that most users would use is not very constructive.
So my question is simple, is there a "realman" type program available in Ubuntu via the command line that is more user oriented as opposted to system administrator oriented?
man
s manpage:...on-line reference manual...
. Manpages are not meant to be a tutorial, but a reference of all capabilities. Yes, it can be quite overwhelming (man gcc
anyone?), but it is an invaluable comprehensive ressource that is easily accessible, no matter if you're connected to the internet or not. I agree however that many manpages lack useful examples (the manpage offind
is an exception that comes to my mind).realman
utility, I propose you call itlayman
- real men (and women of course) useman
:D