[Aptitude-devel] Bug#532083: aptitude: please document search patterns in man page or help output

[Felix Stupp]

Hi,

I stumbled across this bug and I also would like to see the search patterns in the man page if that is possible.

The man pages are a good central place to search for answers locally.
Following the UNIX principle, `man` is a great program to just display manuals.
The manual viewer of aptitude feels like a rebuilt of `man` and `less`/`more`.
Also man pages can also be viewed and searched using graphical applications without changing or adapting the man pages.
Because of that and of (I think) most Linux users will natively use man to seek for answers to their questions,
it would be great if an explanation for the search patterns can also be found in the man page of aptitude.

Maybe you can find a way to convert the HTML manual to a man page automatically during build,
or (if possible and not too complex) rewrite the HTML pages to man pages by hand and convert this to a HTML manual automatically.

Best regards,
Felix Stupp

PS: Without this bug report, it had never come to my mind that an explanation for the search patterns can be found in aptitude's UI.
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