Documentation 101

[jasont]

Note: By the time you read this apex will probably have made a binary [img]images/icons/wink.gif"%20border="0[/img]

You should have noticed that there are a few ways to get information on commands in unix and in the finder.

1) Mac Help Center
2) Html documents
-a tip here is to go to the directory you want, type pwd, copy the output path and paste that into your browser
3) man <command>
-man -w <command> will show you the location of the manual you are loading.
-man man is worth a read
-you can read nonpathed man files like this
nroff -man <dir>/<filename> | less
4) <command> --help
-this sometimes gives you a help screen
5)<command> this is last resort because sometimes you run a command this way instead of getting "usuage"

But I can't read the documentation for <command>

There are 2 file formats that are not native to the readers in mac os x

6) POD (plain old documentation) these files are converted to man files when you install the with make. However, should you wish to read them you can issue the command

pod2man <filename.pod> | nroff -man | <pager>

Where pager is something like more

7) What's this info stuff and why can't I see the man pages for this new command ex: tar that I just installed.

You may see a directory called info in your directory structure. This contains files readable with texinfo (TeX files).

You can find the webpage for it here <A HREF="http://www.fsf.org/software/texinfo/texinfo.html" TARGET=_blank>http://www.fsf.org/software/texinfo/texinfo.html</A>

As I recall this was prettymuch a straightforward install

*starts apex countdown 11:21:23 PM PST
-j
*stops ob1 timer at 1:42:01 AM PST might have been earlier than that [img]images/icons/wink.gif"%20border="0[/img]
[ August 15, 2001: Message edited by: jasont ]

[ August 16, 2001: Message edited by: jasont ]

[jasont]

8: When I do info <command> it doesn't show the information. There is probably a fix to this that adds <command> to the index table, but you can always do
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">code:</font><HR><pre>
info --file=automake.info
</pre>[/quote]
This example was from the info directory, but standard paths should work.
-j

[jayce]

For the point (2), there is a simplier way :
just type
"open -a OmniWeb.app thefile.html" and it will open OmniWeb on the file specified...
The "-a Application" is optionnal, it is just to specify an app, if not specified, the default app for this type will be used...

[jasont]

[img]images/icons/smile.gif"%20border="0[/img] I was trying to remember how to do that Thanks a lot! JP