On Sun, Jan 06, 2002 at 01:02:46PM -0600, Frederick Bruckman wrote:
> A lot of man pages put their options in a logical order. "pax", for
> example, list the principle options '-r' and '-w' first. Alphabetizing
> all the man page options will *not* make the man page any easier to
> read, but it would certainly increase the effort required to import an
> updated version. It's not as if the author of the man page were
> unaware that "a" comes before "b" and so on, so he's not likely to
> change it just because you ask him to.

That's right, but there are many programs where you just search for wtf
did -x do ? You could argue that all man pages should group options
in logical order, like ls: the sort, reverse and sort by stuff should
all be next to each other, etc. etc. In my opinion a uniform approach
would help the user tho.


> You guys know, you can do '/-a{CR}' in the pager to skip to the
> description for option '-a'?
Yes, sure. You can skip much and -any pager should implement it- find the right entry.
If the -z option won't work, try running the program with --autoblah.

-a : 	append-only

Imagine the above, try to search for -o :) or -a... yeah of course it's just
a minor issue, but a uniform, logical approach wouldn't hurt people :)

Martin Weber