Re: More missing options for guile/doc/guile.1

[Neil Jerram <neil@ossau.uklinux.net>]

Andy Wingo <wingo@pobox.com> writes:

> On Sat 15 Jan 2011 22:15, Neil Jerram <neil@ossau.uklinux.net> writes:
>
>> Mark Harig <idirectscm@aim.com> writes:
>>
>>> Here is a list of additional options that are not described
>>> in the guile manual page:
>>
>> Thank you for pointing these out, and for suggesting suitable text.
>> However, rather than applying these updates, I wonder if the OPTIONS
>> section of guile.1 should instead be autogenerated from the `Invoking
>> Guile' node of the manual?
>>
>> Andy/Ludo, any objection to that?
>
> I have no objection, no; and I'm sorry I didn't see this mail before
> committing some other changes and asking for feedback.  I'm a bit
> behind, you see!

No prob.

> How do you see the man page?  Should it be complete, or terse?  I am
> leaning towards the latter, to be honest...

One reasonable answer would be:

- complete as regards invocation options - because in practice, that's
  mostly what I use man pages for, and I imagine that's true for many
  people

- otherwise in line with other GNU applications (such as in the ways
  that Mark pointed out)

- obviously, pointing to the manual for the full documentation.

But I'm not wedded to the first point here.  I guess we could just say

  guile [OPTIONS] [SCRIPT]

and then point to the manual for more details. More generally, I'd say
the minimum requirements are just for the man page to have some kind of
structural sense, not to say anything actively wrong, to point to the
manual, and to conform to any GNU project reqts, such as about copying.

        Neil