Bug#251996: acknowledged by developer (Re: Bug#251995: gnome-applets: no manpages supplied)

[Karsten M. Self]

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on Thu, Jun 03, 2004 at 12:08:44AM +0200, Sebastien Bacher (seb128@debian.o=
rg) wrote:
> Le mer, 02/06/2004 =E0 14:14 -0700, Karsten M. Self a =E9crit :
>=20
> > There's no such policy exclusion.  Reopening.
>=20
> Hi,
>=20
> Policy is not perfect. There is no valid reason to have a manpage for
> something that can't be run from command line (running an applet from
> the command line simple do nothing, it just hangs), applets are not in
> the path, ...

There are numerous apps not in the path which have manpages.

Moreover:  there are numerous _system_ features which have manpages
though they're only accessible through programming interfaces.  The
manual isn't strictly a user resource, it's a system documentation
resource.  Memory is hazy, but IIRC the original UNIX system manual was
for programming interfaces, shell commands were added later.

> You can compare applets to a plugin if you want, nothing in the policy
> says that plugins have to get a manpage.

I'd read "Each program, utility, and function" as suggesting that
plugins, to the extent that they're identifiable, _would_ have manpages,
and should if a bug is filed on them.
=20
> Could you provide more details of why you want it ? Please do just
> answer "because policy says you need to provide a manpage", that's not a
> good reason here.

Because among the places I go for system information on features is the
man and apropos systems.   The GNOME applets have identifiable
execuatables and show in the process table.  This is sufficient
indication IMO that they should have manpages.

A stub page describing the applet, how it's to be invoked, and where the
extended docs live, would be good.  References as a URL, file ref, or
GNOME docs ref, would be sufficient.   I may craft same time permitting.

Specific interest:  I wanted to know how to fix issues with several
applets which weren't functioning properly.



Peace.

--=20
Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com>        http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
 What Part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
    So we took the half-a-ton of garbage, put it in the back of a red VW
    microbus
    - A. Guthrie

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