Talk:Man page

Add missing Arch-specific man pages + new specific section

It seems a lot of man pages from Arch Linux's projects are missing, which I believe that should be added. I generated a list running the following:

pkgs="arch-install-scripts devtools mkinitcpio namcap netctl pacman pacman-contrib"
for pkg in $pkgs; do
 echo ""
 echo "; {{Pkg|$pkg}}"
 mans=$(pacman -Ql $pkg | grep -E '/man/.*\.gz' | sed 's|.*/man/man[0-9]/||;s|\.gz||' | sort)
 for man in $mans; do
   name=${man%.*}
   num=${man##*.}
   echo "* {{man|$num|$name}}"
 done
done

Note how this command split man pages by package name, with an output e.g.:

...
; {{Pkg|namcap}}
* {{man|1|namcap}}

; {{Pkg|netctl}}
* {{man|1|netctl}}
...

which is rendered as:

namcap

namcap(1)

netctl

netctl(1)

IMHO, adding all of these man pages would increase too much the size of #Noteworthy man pages. Having that said, I'm considering to:

Add a specific section (maybe subsection?) for Arch Linux man pages
Update the list of Arch man pages with the output of the above command; preceded by a brief note regarding being split by package name

Opinions, suggestions, objections?
-- Josephgbr (talk) 19:16, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Arch-specific or not, I don't see the point of showing manuals for projects like pacman or makepkg which have their own pages on the wiki. -- Lahwaacz (talk) 11:34, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Consider removing changing Man page#Page width

As of today, it seems to be that the bash function mentioned in this article doesn't serve any purpose, since this functionality is already provided by both man-db and mandoc.

Eisti (talk) 07:50, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

mandoc's man is not controlled by $MANWIDTH. If I remember correctly, man-db's man uses the full terminal width by default, which can be reduced by setting $MANWIDTH. But then it is not dynamic, so the trick in the section selects the minimum of $MANWIDTH and the current terminal width. — Lahwaacz (talk) 10:11, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

I can agree that it is useful, but it solves a different problem than what is described in the second paragraph. It then solves the problem of having to read too long lines and it should be rephrased to reflect that IMHO. -- Eisti (talk) 06:12, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Perhaps the instructions under "Installation" could be clearer?

The instructions state, "man-pages provides the Linux man pages". But this package isn't needed if we only want to read the man pages of apps we've installed, right (I'm assuming apps on Arch come with a man page)?

Pound Hash (talk) 02:17, 21 December 2021 (UTC)