What use are these (rpm) entries in 'man'?

[Robert Locke]

On Fri, 2007-11-02 at 14:48 +0000, Chris G wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 02, 2007 at 09:00:41AM -0400, Robert Locke wrote:
> > On Fri, 2007-11-02 at 11:02 +0000, Chris G wrote:
> > <snip>
> > > Adding the (rpm) entries means that the whatis database is no longer a
> > > "set of database files containing short descriptions of system
> > > commands" because the things it puts in there are *not* system
> > > commands.
> > 
> > Never has been.  Only the things in "chapter 1" are really "system
> > commands".  The whatis database was initially a summary of the
> > description lines of each of the man pages, but that has included
> > commands, files, library functions, etc.  Looking at the chapter told
> > you what it was.  But now there are things on the system that have no
> > traditional man page, but might be what you are looking for.  So some
> > folks hacked in the (rpm) chapter so that we at least no about the
> > existence of those facilities when we "search our system" even though
> > they do not have a traditional man page....
> > 
> > I think it's a neat idea....
> > 
> 
> OK, maybe, but it would be *much* more useful if one was pointed at
> some information about the thing in question, e.g. 'man -k yelp' tells
> me:-
> 
>     yelp                (rpm) - A system documentation reader from the Gnome project
> 
> but doesn't give me a clue as to how to find out anything else.  The
> whole point of 'man -k' or 'apropos' is surely to point at the place
> where you can find out more about they keyword you have entered.


It does.  It tells me to look in rpm (for example):

rpm -ql $(rpm -qf $(which yelp))

Which will probably, as I look through the files that were installed in
the package, point me to a directory
under /usr/share/doc/<package-version>/....

Or, maybe I try:

yelp --help

and since this is a GUI tool, that's probably the only thing I'm going
to get..... :-)

--Rob