Comment by tpoacher

To be fair, it depends on your exact definition of manpages, which is not clear from the article.

If by "manpages" you mean locally stored documentation which goes beyond the simple usage and available options that you'd expect from a --help switch, then I completely disagree. I believe locally available documentation in an easily accessible form and compatible with a terminal is a must.

If by "manpages" you mean specifically "it needs to be generated via groff or troff or whatever it is that generates a manpage, and is specifically for use with `man`", then fine, I can see the point. But the rebuttal here wouldn't be "because webdocs are better", and it certainly wouldn't be "because you can always bloat your --help switch to dump a mountain of text". If you have another structured way of delivering local documentation for your project, then so be it (tex does this with texdoc for instance).

Having said that, as far as standards go for local documentation with a useful and consistent structure and interface, manpages is definitely #1 and worth considering in your project, and most definitely before "webdocs".