Post #1949802
2026-05-03 12:20 UTC
@jay @cstross @annehargreaves @kamstrup The best `man` pages are written to be so opaque that the only people who can understand the `man` page are people who don't need the `man` page because they know it all already.
Or possibly because they wrote the `man` page themselves.
Replies (3)
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@cstross@wandering.shop 2026-05-03 13:13
@angusm @jay @annehargreaves @kamstrup I used to write (and maintain) man pages for a living. What does that make *me*?
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@jay@blan.cc 2026-05-03 13:43
@angusm @cstross @annehargreaves @kamstrup There used to be a time when the gold standard for a man page was "You should be able to reverse engineer the program from this manpage". I recently tried to work out how to configure Thermald. Those days are long long gone.
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@SoftwareTheron@mas.to 2026-05-03 18:51
@angusm For certain values of "best". There must be a man page explaining the syntax of "best", right? @jay @cstross @annehargreaves @kamstrup