Re: Better Help Docs Searching?

[Roman Neuhauser <neuhauser@xxxxxxxxxx>]

# rayandrews@xxxxxxxxxxx / 2021-08-04 07:56:47 -0700:
> On 2021-08-03 11:30 p.m., Roman Neuhauser wrote:
> >   simply sucks, and
> It simply does, and it sure is comforting to hear it from an adeptus, 
> the novice tends to think that it's all his fault but sometimes not.

there's a little more to the story, i failed to keep up with the times!
parts of the tooling are much better nowadays than they were twenty
years ago, cf.

* https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=apropos&manpath=FreeBSD+4.4-RELEASE
* https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=apropos&manpath=FreeBSD+13.0-RELEASE

the contemporary version is basically altavista at its heyday, just
for man pages.  the remaining work is to retire the man+pager combo
and make the advanced capabilities accessible from inside the integrated
viewer alongside a simplified interface.

> I wonder if anything at all could possibly be done about this.

"will nobody think of the beginners" is a perpetual problem.  you can
learn to program, be very good at it, be in the right place at the
right time to actually have impact, and see how long you'll keep
interest in writing software that isn't for you anymore because you
have learned more efficient ways.  all the while facing a deluge of
users complaining that it's still not enough.  and do it gratis. :)

-- 
roman