Inverted manpages? - programs listed by function?

[gabrielle harrison and Paul van den Bergen]

Hi All,

One of the things that I have always found frustrating with computers, and  
especially when one starts with a new OS or programming language, is the  
mismatch between knowing something is possible and how to do it.

for example, man or info pages give detailed instructions on how to  
configure a program. Alabi they do assume you know already what the terms  
all mean, but still it's useful.

Howto documents tell you how to achieve a certain thing - usually in  
specific detail.

between teh two I see a big need. A reverse lookup table, listing by  
function, all the programs that could be appropriate with a description of  
what they do (a many to many list, as it were)

e.g. say I want to construct a firewall, man -k firewall would not  
necessarily help me or give me good knowledge about all my options. A  
google for HOWTOs would be more usefull, but may be application specific.  
Say I want to look at setting up a firewall and don't quite know what I  
want to use or have it do. It would be nice to have a place I can look up  
firewall as a service and see a list of all the programs that perform that  
service and what their range of functionality is (and perhaps a list of  
related terms - though this would become obvious from context soon  
enough)...

does such a thing exist? (other than wikipedia)


-- 
Dr Paul van den Bergen
Chance favours the prepared mind