Ubuntu Help compared with other help systems

[Dan McGarry]

Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> On Apr 2, 2006, at 9:33 PM, Dean Sas wrote:
>> ...
>> I just don't think manpages are useful for 90%+ of the population. To
>> use a manpage means you're going to have to drop to a terminal anyway,
>> so there's not that much point for it to show up in searches for 
>> techies (perhaps unless they specifically ask for it). I can't think 
>> what usable information man pages provide that'd be useful to a non 
>> techie, if we ever have to rely on man pages to fix untechnical 
>> peoples problems we've failed already.
>> ...
> Perhaps, but your user base is not "untechnical people". The kind of 
> people who open help in the first place are predominantly experts, not 
> novices. <http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2005/11/29/497861.aspx>

True. And more to the point, a search utility is, IMO, not designed to 
tell people more about what they already know, but to help them find 
what they need. Example: If someone already knows which command they 
want to run, they'll drop to the console and go straight to the man 
page, but if they don't know which command to use, they'll definitely 
want a search feature.

IME, 'man -k' doesn't quite cut it, so *optional* inclusion of man pages 
in search results would be a very desirable feature.

-- 
Dan McGarry	it.psl at fsp.org.vu

IT Consultant
Community Communications Project