on Wed, Dec 26, 2001 at 03:38:20PM +0000, Colin Watson ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: > On Tue, Dec 25, 2001 at 03:02:25PM -0800, Karsten M. Self wrote: > > on Tue, Dec 25, 2001 at 12:51:09PM -0600, Colin Watson > > ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: > > > Come up with examples and send patches. That'll achieve results much > > > faster than anything else I can think of. > > > > Specific instructions on how to do this? > > > > I significantly reformatted the printcap(5) man page at one point and > > sent the result to the package maintainer, with no results or > > response. > > This is, unfortunately, just a specific case of the general problem that > a lot of non-urgent problems don't get dealt with promptly, especially > if the maintainer isn't very active. > > Do use the bug tracking system. In the case of printcap(5), a bug > should be filed against the three packages that contain it (lpr, > lprng, lpr-ppd), and I can't find anything from you against any of > those packages, although I was reading quickly so I could have missed > it.
I checked myself last night, and don't see anything. My concern was
whether or not I should post my revised manpage to the bugtracking
system itself.
> If you don't use the bug tracking system, then if a new maintainer
> takes over the package he/she typically won't see the mail you sent,
> and your work will have been wasted. Even active maintainers are more
> likely to respond to things filed in the BTS, as it provides an
> automatic to-do list.
>
> (If you send me a bug by private mail that I can't deal with Right
> Now, chances are I'll file it in the BTS myself, but I might not
> always remember before my inbox floods onto another screen.)
>
> > If you'll look at printcap manpage, you'll find that large portions
> > of it are essentially "pre" formatted text (or the groff
> > equivalent), and structured for a terminal window rather wider than
> > 80 characters.
>
> Probably depends on which package you're looking at. The version in
> lpr uses mdoc's .Bl request to construct a list, and looks OK.
lprng. I don't use groff or the man macros enough to know what the tag
is, I suspect it's ".nf", for 'no format'. More likely the tbl macros
should be used.
> > Might be useful to go through the manpages and look for similar
> > issues....
>
> It should be possible to do this automatically.
>
> for x in `find /usr/share/man -type f`; do
> man -l $x | grep -q '.{81,}' && echo $x
> done
>
> ... or something morally equivalent.
Cool, thanks.
Peace.
--
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