[tex-live] Did you ever try "texdoc latex"?

[Robin Fairbairns]

Philip TAYLOR (Ret'd) <P.Taylor at rhul.ac.uk> wrote (in response to Keks Dose):

> Well, I don't get that, but I do get told
> (from LaTeX.pdf) that "This manual page is
> not meant to be exhaustive. The complete
> documentation for this version of TEX can
> be found in the info file or manual /Web2C:
> A TeX implementation/.".  Which is also,
> perhaps, not the most useful piece of
> information with which hit the beginner
> at the outset ...

which shows, perhaps, a general weakness of tex as a whole (not just
latex) -- there are too few documenters.  we have a high-powered group
of people putting distributions together (not just the tl crowd), and
almost no-one who spends signficant time on "general" documentation.

as a result, we have no coherent plan about documentation, and it's no
great surprise that a un*x man page turns up on phil's widnoze computer,
and that something else discouraging turns up on keks's.  (note that
there are people who swear by un*x man pages, but i've always considered
they were things written by geeks for geeks.  as a grey-haired old geek
myself, i often find they let me down.)

so what is to be done?  i work on a faq, but i fear developments are
running away from me.  i don't know of anyone else in the tex world, who
considers his/her main contribution is documentation.

any suggestions?  or shall i work up a tugboat paper appealing for
support in a new push?

robin