[PLUG] Online copies of textinfo content available?

Richard Owlett rowlett at cloud85.net
Tue Oct 30 14:46:04 UTC 2018


On 10/29/2018 10:47 PM, King Beowulf wrote:
>>>> [snip]
>>> Also check your local drive.  Depending on how XYZ was packaged to
>>> install onto you linux disribution, you should find documentation under
>>>
>>> /usr/doc/XYZ
>>
>> Such path(s) do not exist on my machine.
> 
> Ack. Another reason I do not use your distro.  No offense.

ROFL Who? Me? Atypical permutation of viewpoints?

> There are
> usually either HTML or text or both documenation files shipped with
> source archives. A binary packager that just tosses them...

IIUC That, for me, is not a "bug" but a "feature".
When I started investigating Linux I was on dial-up. Even now I have a 
low data cap. One of my "round TUIT" projects is a less obese version of 
Debian distro.

> 
>>
>> Following nested Gnu links suggests there exists something referred to
>> as "INFOPATH" *BUT* no hint how to retrieve it. < *ARGHHHHH* >
> 
> if 'echo $INFOPATH' is empty, ah well, [snip;]
> 
> You could write a shell script to dump them all as plain text to a fat32
> (vfat) formatted USB drive and then read them on any PC device.
> 
> If the infopage you want is not there because the application package
> was not installed, well, then you need to read the documentation on the
> developer web site in whatever format they decide to provide.

Not necessarily.
Reasoning by analogy:
   Man pages are available online.
   Some admit there is information elsewhere and can be had simply.
Therefor one would expect to retrieve that information as simply as the 
man page was retrieved.

I'll investigate a script taking a single argument {pkg name} and 
displaying in preferred browser. I should be able to meet my "simplicity 
of use" goal.

Unfortunately, though retired I am still constrained by 24 hr days ;/







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