Re: TOC for man

On 2/14/07, Eric Shubes <plug@shubes.net> wrote:
> Jon M. Hanson wrote:
> > On Wed, Feb 14, 2007 at 08:50:20AM -0700, Eric Shubes wrote:
> >> Jon M. Hanson wrote:
> >>> On Wed, Feb 14, 2007 at 07:53:43AM -0700, Eric Shubes wrote:
> >>>> I'm tired of hunting for man pages. My problem is, "man what"?
> >>>>
> >>>> I usually know what package I'm looking for some documentation about (or
> >>>> want to learn about), so I "rpm -ql package | grep man" to see what man
> >>>> pages are available.
> >>>>
> >>>> Is there a better way? Of course there could be. I've googled and came up
> >>>> with nothing that's CLI oriented (which is what I want).
> >>>>
> >>>> I'm thinking of writing a script:
> >>>> mansfor [package_name]
> >>>> that will give me a nice menu of man pages to browse for a particular
> >>>> package. That would satisfy my immediate need. Then I'd probably add -s to
> >>>> search for a string included in a package_spec, and optional section numbers
> >>>> to filter, so it'd look more like
> >>>> mansfor {section_number} ... {-s} [package_spec]
> >>>>
> >>>> Does anyone know of something like this that already exists? I'm just not
> >>>> inclined to reinvent the wheel.
> >>> Do you know about the -k switch to man. This looks for a specific
> >>> keyword in all of the man pages. Also the apropos command may also be
> >>> able to help you.
> >>>
> >> No I didn't. It appears (man man) that the -k switch is equivalent to
> >> apropos. apropos helps, but it's not always sufficient. I don't necessarily
> >> know what I'm looking for (especially in learning mode). I can sometimes
> >> chase things down using SEE ALSO references, but I feel like I'm on a
> >> scavenger hunt, and it's difficult to get the big picture. All the pieces
> >> are there, but there's no sense of the puzzle.
> >
> > I'll admit that man -k isn't the best solution but it does help even if
> > it does take a couple of tries to find what you're looking for. Do you
> > have a recent example of something that you were looking for but didn't
> > know where to start looking?
> >
>
> I'm using qmail-toaster, and each one of the many packages has its own set
> of man pages. I've found the most difficulty with DJB related packages
> (daemontools, ucspi-tcp, and qmail), although. DJB's stuff is a love-hate
> sort of thing.
>
> As an example, I just stumbled upon qmail-spamthrottle. I never knew it was
> there. Looks kinda cool. How did I find it? Browsing through all of the man
> pages for qmail-toaster. There's very little documentation of DJB stuff
> apart from the man pages. Other packages (pick any) seem to lack any way of
> looking at the man pages top down. Everything seems to be bottom up.
>
> apropos is like an index, and a good one. I'm looking for a Table Of Contents.
>
> I appreciate everyone's input on this.
> --
> -Eric 'shubes'

shubes,

I found a manpage online,
qmail-spamthrottle(5) - the qmail spam throttle mechanism

This means that 'apropos qmail' should have returned it among the
manpage listings, since qmail appears in the description.

What does 'apropos qmail' return on your system?

-A
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