
Git manpage generator - orkoden
http://git-man-page-generator.lokaltog.net
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ozh
Fun. Unfortunately, I think it's a bad sign when random mambo-jumbo generated
by a Markov chain script looks so much like the real stuff...

~~~
ygra
Markov chains help a lot in making the output look like the real stuff, that's
kinda their purpose in this case. Heck, there have been automatically-
generated conference papers that have been accepted and went through peer
review (although this might tell a lot about _that_ process, too ...).

git manpages are apparently full of very git-specific terminology and quite
dense. I would guess the same model applied to the J documentation would be
equally unreadable for the uninitiated. If the source material was more
readable and easier to grasp the automatically-generated versions would
reflect that (to some degree, until it's obvious that's nonsense).

~~~
Silkebacon
The generator doesn't use markov chains, it's grammar-based similar to the
Dada Engine which powers the postmodernism generator. There's a link to a
markov chain based generator in the footer, check it out, it's pretty funny
and a lot more random.

~~~
ygra
I stand corrected on that point, then. But still, I guess it's no surprise
that something tailored to look/sound like something else looks/sounds like
that something else ;-)

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jordigh
I wonder, since this is an obvious parody of the sorry state of git's
manpages, do people find Mercurial's manpages any easier to read?

[http://www.selenic.com/mercurial/hg.1.html](http://www.selenic.com/mercurial/hg.1.html)

~~~
DougBTX
Mercurial's seem to assume less knowledge, the bisect pages are a good
example.

Mercurial bisect:

    
    
        This command helps to find changesets which introduce problems.
    

Git bisect:

    
    
        Find by binary search the change that introduced a bug
    

Someone could happily use Mercurial bisect without knowing that it is doing a
binary search. The Mercurial docs also get into simple examples before
explaining all the options, while the git docs list all of the options first,
which presumably could scare people away who are just after simple usage.

~~~
username223
Given that HG still calls it "bisect" rather than "find-changed" or something,
I would be surprised if it didn't use binary search.

~~~
rbonvall
The point is that you don't need to know.

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pekk
and yet I still switched to Git, knowing all this, and don't regret it,
because it gives me enough power to fit my workflows rather than me serving my
VCS all day.

There are now a large number of friendly ways to learn git, if you don't like
the man pages then don't use them. It's not exactly uncommon for man pages to
have technical material in them

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Dorian-Marie
I find it really accurate to my experience with Git man pages, e.g:
[https://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/](https://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/)

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fish2000
I did not think a random-thing-generator could possibly make me laugh again,
but for me `git-shoot-subtree` was the undeniable breaking point.

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jvilk
I made a (very childish) bookmarklet to make it more fun :)

[http://people.cs.umass.edu/~jvilk/bookmarklet.html](http://people.cs.umass.edu/~jvilk/bookmarklet.html)
(The "javascript:" link for the bookmarklet is on this page)

Click it when you're on a Git manpage, either legitimate or generated.

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nandhp
I wish it had permalinks.

~~~
Silkebacon
That's a great idea. I'll see what I can do!

Edit: Just added the permalink feature, thanks for the tip!

