man bzip2 - suggest we add to See Also

[Julian H. Stacey]

"b. f." wrote:
> >
> > I suggest we should add a See Also section to man bzip2,
> >
> >         FreeBSD-8.2-RELEASE & current man bzip2
> >                 .../-current/src/contrib/bzip2/bzip2.1
> >
> > adding URLs
> >         http://www.7-zip.org/download.html      ->
> >         http://www.freshports.org/archivers/p7zip/
> >
> > as currently no reference is made to 7zip or 7-zip
> 
> I'm a bit confused -- are you recommending this because you think that
> users should be aware of the the other compression methods/archive
> formats that 7zip uses, so that they can investigate alternatives, or
> just because it is a Windows program that can decompress bzipped
> files?

Yes.
If FreeBSD users happen to export .bz2 files to Microsoft users,
uts nice to be able to tell MS users at least 1 MS program that can 
access the format.

> In either case, I don't see any reason to single out 7zip --
> we have xz(1) in the base system now, and there are other, arguably
> better compression methods in Ports. And there is a lot of
> Windows-based software that can decompress bzip2, including Windows
> ports of bzip2 itself.

OK didnt know that. by all means add a URL.

> I don't think that the bzip2 manpage is the
> appropriate place to add this kind of information.  (Perhaps the
> FreeBSD Handbook, in a section about working with files typically
> found on FreeBSD or other Unixen in Windows, or in libarchive(5), if
> it were changed to support the 7zip archive format.) And I don't think
> that -hackers is the appropriate list for this proposal -- -doc seems
> to be the right place.

Well I'm an old Unix hand, I have much more faith in the man command,
that works on machines even if no net connected. (& easy to edit,
& format without the tool chain from hell that doc uses) hence I
suggested adding a URL in see also of man.

Cos' if eg I get a phone call from an MS [l]user saying "what do I
do with your .bz2?" I would first by reflex type man bzip2 /See
Also.  & not first connect to net & mouse around to docs.

Cheers,
Julian
-- 
Julian Stacey, BSD Unix Linux C Sys Eng Consultants Munich http://berklix.com
 Reply below, not above;  Indent with "> ";  Cumulative like a play script.
 Format: Plain text. Not HTML, multipart/alternative, base64, quoted-printable.
 http://www.softwarefreedomday.org 17th Sept,  http://berklix.org/sfd/ Oct.