man bzip2 - suggest we add to See Also

[Julian H. Stacey]

Chris Rees wrote:
> 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

Good point. Consisteny; that would probably tilt to Not adding any URLs;
but many Unix commands don't have direct comparable commands, so
there's not so many commands to be consistent with I suppose, 

tar might be a related tool to be consistent with, but
bsdtar is quite new, & hasn't had much time to accumulate URLs
to compatible tools on other OS's, though it does have a section Standards.

Google & other search engines help discovery, (that's how I
found bzip2 compression method listed on minux3.org in last URL).

I guess author of imported code will decide:
	Julian Seward <jseward at bzip.org>

Cheers,
Julian
-- 
Julian Stacey, BSD Unix Linux C Sys Eng Consultants Munich http://berklix.com
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