man pages

[Panu Matilainen]

On Sun, 2006-05-28 at 19:22 +0200, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> On Sun, 2006-05-28 at 14:47 +0300, Panu Matilainen wrote:
> > On Sun, 2006-05-28 at 11:29 +0200, Dag Wieers wrote:
> > > On Sat, 27 May 2006, Vincent Danen wrote:
> > > 
> > > > * Panu Matilainen <pmatilai at laiskiainen.org> [2006-05-27 21:08:59 +0300]:
> > > > 
> > > > > 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.  =)
> > 
> > Re-read my comment, I wouldn't be opposed to having pre-compiled manual
> > pages in the distribution tarballs, somebody just send me a patch to
> > make the compilation happen automatically in "make dist".
> I had a stab at this some weeks ago, but never finished it, because
> support to ship precompiled man-pages isn't as easy as it seems at first
> glance, because the apt's manpages' contents isn't static and rather
> unfortunately placed/packages inside of the source-tree.
> 
> So, if we could live with some regression on the man-pages' contents,
> adding pre-compiled manpages is doable.

I'd appreciate it, and obviously others would as well.

If things need to be moved around to make it possible/easier, then so be
it. If we lose some flexibility on the "dynamic" content.. is there
anything actually *important* in the manuals depending on build-time
environment? I wouldn't think so.

Considering the amount of debianisms and out-of-datedness in the current
man pages real regressions would be hard to achieve I think :)

	- Panu -