man pages

[Vincent Danen]

* Panu Matilainen <pmatilai at laiskiainen.org> [2006-05-27 21:08:59 +0300]:

> > > > The manpages are currently extremely debian-centric and a lot of the
> > > > options that would be pertinent to apt-rpm are missing, the like the "-o
> > > > rpm::rootdir=" option.
> > > > 
> > > > Are there any plans to clean these manpages up?  It seems to me, based
> > > > on some conversation that I've watched, that apt-rpm is sufficiently
> > > > diverged from debian's apt to warrant a manpage overhaul.
> > > > 
> > > > Thoughts?  Note, I'm not asking the developers to do it... =)  I'd be
> > > > more than willing to put some time into the effort as well (it's
> > > > important to me to have accurate manpages, especially if I look at
> > > > replacing urpmi with apt).
> > > 
> > > I know, the manuals totally suck at the moment. Improved documentation
> > > is on the todo-list and patches/wholly rewritten man pages would be
> > > very, very welcome.
> > 
> > =)
> > 
> > Well, as soon as I finish converting my installer from using urpmi to
> > using apt, I'll give this a gander.
> > 
> > Note that I'm going to change it so that the manpages don't have to be
> > "compiled" because I think that sucks.
> 
> I guess I didn't reply to the manpage thread...
> 
> Please use the sgml/xml documentation format. It's nice for creating
> non-manpage documentation, but I certainly agree having to "compile" man
> pages is silly. I wouldn't be against somebody submitting a patch to
> make "make dist" build the documentation as well for inclusion in
> distribution tarballs, hint hint :)

Yeah, but the problem with sgml/xml documentation is you need to have
the appropriate dtd's and whatnot available... I could only do so by
either a) adding about a half-dozen or so packages to Annvix (for use by
a single package in *compiling*, nevermind day-to-day use), or b)
compile them on a Mandriva system and make a separate tarball.

So forgive me if I'm not too keen on the xml/sgml idea.  =)

What other formats do you want the manpages in other than txt and html?
There are man2txt and man2html converters about that would be
sufficient, no?  Or are you making pdf files with these?

-- 
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