On: Actually using Ed

[luriel]

Linux man pages are notoriously verbose, and often obtuse and incomplete, this is in great part due to the extra complexity of GNU tools and their preference for the infamous info documentation system.

OpenBSD has probably the best Unix manual pages:

http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=ed

And Plan 9 has a manual that is a pleasure to read, this is helped in part because the commands themselves have been cleaned up and simplified in many cases:

http://man.cat-v.org/p9p/1/ed

[andreasvc → luriel]

I think instead of `verbose' you meant the opposite `terse.'

[ralph → andreasvc]

They're either the output of --help turned into -man macros or more noise than signal. Damn info!

[agumonkey → luriel]

I dream of a system with features such as iPython live doc, or Bret Victor's tangle. It seems an approachable goal nowadays.