NewHelpSystem & man pages

[markd at macports.org]

>> This is also the reason why I am splitting this into multiple smaller
>> man pages describing one command only. This makes it much easier to 
>> find
>> what you are after than searching a long port(1).
>
>Just to talk about this one point for a moment, perl has its manpages 
>split up into several, as a consequence of which I can't ever find 
>anything in them and never use them, opting to search Google instead. 
>If it had a single manpage, I could type "man perl", press return, 
>press "/", type my search string, press return, and see the result. 
>But since there are well over a hundred perl manpages, I have no hope 
>of finding what I want.

I also don't like tiny man pages, and don't use them.  It almost sounds
like we're talking about some form of expanded command help.
>
>Similarly, I've almost never looked at the chunked Guide. I load the 
>single-page Guide, so that I can press Command-F, type my search 
>string, press return, and find what I'm looking for. Which isn't to 
>say we shouldn't have the chunked Guide; we should. I suppose I'm 
>saying there are trade-offs with either approach.

Yes the single page guide is very useful for searching.  If we could get a
good index in it somehow that make searches unnecessary that would make
the one-page version obsolete, but I'm not sure how feasible that is.

Mark