when do you usually use the man page for a complex command line tool to answer a question you have?

[dave@rascalking.com]

@bortzmeyer @b0rk same.  and then web search if the man page is unhelpful.  i think part of it is trying to avoid a context switch from the terminal?

[sagefault@infosec.exchange]

@b0rk personally, it's usually the case that I've used the tool before, I know that it does the thing I want, I just don't remember the invocation details.

So, it's faster to grep the manpage for keywords than launch a web browser.

[ednl@mastodon.social]

@b0rk I very much agree with your consideration: search is worse & frustrating, look for trustworthy sources. For older people (like me..) it's probably easier or more natural to switch back to reading the manual instead of searching as the first option.
I understand how the doc website was more logical to you. But I think a second reason to prefer a man page or readme or whatever, is that websites are so ethereal. They require maintenance that's often not content related, so they get abandoned.

[benjohn@todon.nl]

@b0rk I want to love man pages. I do find them great as detailed reference material, although sometimes a bit impenetrable.

But I don’t (usually) find they are pedagogically well structured. Eg, in general they do not provide lots of examples of uses, from simple basics to more involved use cases. In general they don’t have split in to “basic use and overview” and “advanced use and detail”.

I might be holding it wrong and / or not very bright, though.

[seachdamh@101010.pl]

@b0rk There are still cases where a system has no internet access (regardless of whether for technical, organizational, or legal reasons). Every tool should have reasonably comprehensive offline help/documentation; it could be --help (if it's complete), it could be man, it could be info, or even documentation in plain .txt — it doesn't matter, as long as I still have access to the documentation on a system cut off from the network.

Every non-trivial tool failing to do this is just deficient.

Additionally, websites (contrary to popular belief) aren't eternal. They disappear—and the more niche the tool, the more likely it is to happen. And when they go, the documentation vanishes with them.

[swift@merveilles.town]

@b0rk staying in the terminal feels important. Not breaking flow. Checking --help is part of the same task, tabbing out to search is having to start a new task to get the previous one done.

(subjectively, to me, etc.)

[b0rk@social.jvns.ca]

@ednl yeah, I think the answer to "will there always be a way to get free and reliable static site for open source projects?" is not obvious

When I made that site it felt like github pages would be there forever, and maybe it still will, but I feel less certain of what the future of that looks like than I did.

[b0rk@social.jvns.ca]

@benjohn i feel the exact same way if it helps (though I feel more confident that I'm not holding it wrong)

[benjohn@todon.nl]

@dylannorthrup @b0rk :-) even more helplessly alone is when I find the single hit obscure comment thread from ‘93 was posted by me 😭

[hyperpape@hachyderm.io]

@b0rk I think for me, certain tools feel old and unixy, and a man page feels right. And then certain tools feel new and I expect a website.

But also, man pages feel more correct for “what’s the syntax for this specific thing that must have a flag?” and a website or LLM is much more correct for “how do I use this thing in varied ways?”

[nettles@mastodon.scot]

@b0rk Very much depends. If I think it's likely solved by a simple feature of the tool, like a subcommand or option then I'll look in the help or man page. If it's a higher order "I want to solve this uncommon/situational problem" I'll probably go for a web search... and then cry to myself that the search engines are so bad.

[tmcfarlane@toot.community]

@b0rk one advantage with a man page packaged with the tool is the versioning. The man page should hopefully be the correct version for hte installed tool, avoiding some potential confusion.
I do tend to use man pages for old C libraries if I need docs too. Interestingly I don't do that for Go packages (I either use the local src doc strings that my editor jumps to, or I'll use the pkg.go.dev site).
(obviously there are no man pages for go pkgs, but I rarely use go doc directly)

[gibwar@infosec.exchange]

@b0rk Another reason I can think of is when you're working in environments that have strict version policies, so looking at available man pages gets you the documentation for the version of the tool you have installed. Needing to support older Ansible releases? Gotta check the bundled documentation with ansible-doc because the website is the latest rolling version.

[levitte@mastodon.nu]

@b0rk
Most of all, it's because that's what I have locally on my machinery. If I have that and it's good enough for my level of understanding and purposes, why should I need to go looking on the net?

Rubbish man-pages do exist, though, just the same as pretty bad help output. It's when I run into those that I start looking on the net.

[canacar@ioc.exchange]

@b0rk I got spoilt by the amazing quality and consistency of OpenBSD's man pages. Even when searching the web, I do 'man <command>' first.

[alpha@hey.kejadlen.dev]

@hyperpape @b0rk I feel like man pages and --help overlap some in that I use them both as references, but expect man pages to have more explanation than help, and websites to encompass both being a reference as well as having tutorials/deeper explanation?

[b0rk@social.jvns.ca]

@hyperpape I feel the same way but it's also disorienting because I grew up with the Linux coreutils, and they feel old and unixy, but their man pages afaik are unmaintained and I think it really undermined my confidence in man pages as a format even for old unixy-feeling tools

[sigsegv@hachyderm.io]

@b0rk I started out using man pages before the web was a thing and it’s stuck with me. Too often a web search gives you info on a different variant so options don’t work. That’s if you can find details at all, more a now problem than 5-10 years ago. I’ve always been annoyed with the `info` system. It’s been a few years since I last used it. My path is usually try for a man page, then web search, then remember there’s this `info` thing but I usually strike out there too. I do love a good page that has a nice collection of examples, especially for those complicated commands and functions.

[discontinuity@infosec.exchange]

@b0rk to be honest, I'll often look there first, but immediately get overwhelmed and try a web search instead.

[jschauma@mstdn.social]

@b0rk Probably has to do with how you grew up on the internet. Before StackOverflow, there really wouldn’t have been anything useful on the web; “RTFM” was indeed the generic advice (and sometimes phrased more politely) on Usenet and mailing lists.

Also a factor: the quality of the man pages you’re used to (BSD man pages tend(ed?) to be significantly better than “go use the ‘info’ page” Linux default).