man bzip2 - suggest we add to See Also

[Chris Rees]

On 11 September 2011 13:19, Julian H. Stacey <jhs at berklix.com> wrote:
> "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.
>

Do we usually add a Windows analogue of our commands to the man page?
I would have thought that Google is definitely the most appropriate
medium for finding that out.

Chris