Re: coreutils FAQ link in manpages and/or --help output (original) (raw)

Hi,

Bernhard Voelker wrote, On 02/25/2013 10:58 AM:

On 02/25/2013 03:53 PM, Ondrej Oprala wrote:

to reduce the amount of questions about date, sort and anything multibyte-related, I think it'd be a good idea to add a link to the coreutils FAQ to the man pages (and/or --help output), maybe something like "Report TOOL bugs to address@hidden but please make sure the behaviour is not listed in FAQ: link" What do you think?

I'd not be surprised if this had already been discussed before. However, I like the idea, but it would be best if we had nice translations for that FAQ page.

If changing the general "help" message (I assume from "emit_ancillary_info()"), perhaps consider another change:

Add a line (preferably on top) that would point to "address@hidden" in addition to "address@hidden", saying something like: "For common usage questions, see " and then "Send usage questions to address@hidden" and only then print the existing: "Report sort bugs to address@hidden"

This will (hopefully?) prevent those cases where people send general questions and open a new bug, forcing someone to respond with the boiler-plate answer "by sending an email to this mailing list, you've opened a bug-report, and I'm closing it".

There's already a link saying: "General help using GNU software: <http://www.gnu.org/gethelp/>" But this page is not very helpful for a non-expert who just wants to get help about a specific GNU coreutils program...

Just my two cents, -gordon