Other software documentation systems
There are other systems for software documentation. We cannot say whether it
belongs to the user-oriented or developer-oriented group about neither one of
them. Every one of them was created with a certain particular aim, which it has
followed. These contain:
PerlDoc>
man>
info>
PerlDoc>> is a
documentation system used by the community around a script language Perl>>. The thing that helped its
growth is the existence of CPAN>>
- archive of reusable code for Perl>. The documentation is written
straight into the source code using special POD> marks. Users then
access it using Perl> system script perldoc>. There are
many converters of PerlDoc> documentation into different output
formats, including HTML>.
The documentation system of system manual pages (man> pages) has
been created in the times of creation of the operating system
UNIX> and is actively developed to these days. To format the
output, we use the nroff> program and pages are displayed with
the man> command. They come along on almost every UNIX> or
GNU>/Linux> system. Every man> page is
compressed and saved on the disk separately. There are tools for its conversion
to other formats.
The result of the GNU> movement (GNU> is not
UNIX>) is info> documentation, which is trying to
substitute the man pages. This documentation system is not being used as much as
its creators would expect due to its complicated control and user-unfriendly
look. However, most of the GNU> tools still includes more detailed
documentation in its info> pages than in corresponding
man> pages. The pages can be displayed with the info>
command.