On Wed 19 Apr 2017 at 08:25:31 (-0500), Richard Owlett wrote: > On 04/19/2017 06:59 AM, Peter Ludikovsky wrote: > >On 04/19/2017 01:40 PM, Richard Owlett wrote: > >>I've an idea for something to be added to some man pages. > >>It has not risen even the "wishlist bug" stage yet. > >>To rise that far I have to convince myself that the modification of so > >>many existing man pages could be automated. > >> > >>A web search turned up very low level details but not the need overview. > >>Suggestions? > >>TIA > > > >1) What do you want to do? I'm asking this because it decides whether > >this change could be interesting for others or not. > > I debated mentioning the items that triggered my question. I'm not > personally convinced that a man page would be the optimal place for > the specific items.
Then forget it. If you can't even convince yourself, you're hardly likely to convince others. So how are you going to drive this through? > I phrased the subject line as I did because I > have a long term felling that man pages aren't perfect ;/ You kicked off _that_ debate last November. > But maybe > the imperfection is more in me for not seeing that information > really does not belong in a man page. > > I think it 'should' be of interest to others. But considering > answers I've gotten on other topics, I may be representative of a > small minority. On the face of it, that seems very likely. Most posts you make here appear to be so bound by preconditions that they hardly have general applicability. > >2) Does it affect only Debian-specific man pages, or man pages in > >general? This answer decides if the change is a relatively small > >one (1 or 2 packages), or if you'll have to contact every upstream > >project to get the changes included. > > For want of a better term, they might be considered to be "Debian > specific footnotes > > >3) For any change you want to do & submit an patch for you should read > >up on groff/troff, as that syntax is the base for man. > > That was one of the specifics that triggered mention of "very low > level details". I've no idea what that means. Keep those cards close to your chest... Cheers, David.
