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6 Documenting Programs

See Documentation.

The main documentation for a package is ideally available in Texinfo files, expressed either by nicely printed manuals, or by hypertextual interactive documents. Parts of this documentation is concentrating on usage or invocation for every a program of a package, such documentation should be available through the command `info name', given any program name. A summary of usage may also be requested from the program by `name --help'. Such usage summaries are also available translated for various languages.

This scheme covers most documentation needs, as far as the information itself is concerned. However, man pages may also be available for people praising this particular interface. In no circumstance, man pages may convey information which is not also found in the Texinfo manual. Texinfo files should always be updated first, man pages second. Some man pages still exist only because they predated the Texinfo manual, it is usual to just not update them anymore.