Re: Proposal to remove catman(8)

[Valery Ushakov <uwe%stderr.spb.ru@localhost>]

On Wed, Nov 11, 2020 at 14:42:04 +0100, Kamil Rytarowski wrote:

> On 11.11.2020 06:33, Valery Ushakov wrote:
> > Kamil, you keep confusing mechanism and policy.
> 
> I note that some people still missed that after marking the MKCATPAGES
> files obsolete, every NetBSD/z80 users relying on catman(8) (thus even
> FUZIX/z80 uses dynamic man-pages formatting!) will wipe cat dirs on each
> update. I also note that these people insisting on keeping the cat/ dirs
> have no slight idea how catman(8) does work (hint: it is aware about...
> mkdir(2))
> 
> In the context of objections from people unaware how does catman(8) work
> at all, I accept that the most serious argument for keeping MKCATPAGES
> is that I use window(1).

Kamil, I tried to be extremely explicit in describing how this
MANWIDTH vs. catpages situation might work out so that both scenarios
are supported.  If my reasoning was wrong, please just point it out.

Let me illustrate what I mean with an example.  Since I use bash that
tracks terminal width in $COLUMN I can use that to test what you
propose on an existing system (8-stable) by doing:

- export COLUMNS
- change a line in man.conf to obey MANWIDTH/COLUMNS:

  _build  .[1-9ln]  /usr/bin/mandoc ${COLUMNS+-Owidth=${MANWIDTH:-$COLUMNS}} %s

Yes, that doesn't do the right thing when the output is not a
terminal, but this is good enough for a test.

- man echo resizes the output to fit the terminal width.
- with MANWIDTH set, man formats to that width
- after nroff -mandoc echo.1 > ../cat1/echo.0
  man always shows the cat page
- when that catpage is removed it formats dynamically again


But I keep seeing technical questions either ignored or met with
sarcasm.  I don't think anyone in this thread have a good idea about
what your position really is because in reply to any attempts at
clarification you keep repeating 1) "MANWIDTH", and 2) "mandoc is as a
good at formatting man pages as nroff is".  Once again (technical
details above and in previous messages) - 1 is not really blocked by
catpages-as-mechanism and 2 is irrelevant.


-uwe