Subject: Re: [documentation] changing from UNIX(tm) macros to BSD mdoc
To: matthew green <mrg@eterna.com.au>
From: Igor Sobrado <sobrado@string1.ciencias.uniovi.es>
List: tech-misc
Date: 12/01/2003 12:45:51
In message <3655.1070268454@splode.eterna.com.au>, you wrote:
>    
> we are interested in these changes.  the problem for, eg, the
> GCC man pages is that they are generated by pod2man.  probably
> every time GCC or any other pod2man using program is updated
> the man page will been to be re-translated.  (perhaps the right
> solution for these is to write a pod2mdoc program?)

That is a very good point!  I was not aware about gcc man pages
written in plain old documentation format.  It sounds odd requiring
PERL to build gcc, and there are not comments about "man pages
automatically generated" in the troff source code of those man
pages.  Well, a pod2mdoc program is the right thing to do.  But
my knowledge of PERL is very limited.

As you recommend, I will start working on the non-generated man pages.

> so, if you initially work on the non-generated man pages that
> would been a good thing.  after that's done we can think about
> the generated ones...

I will start with the non-generated man pages.  First job will
be building a list of man pages to be updated.  I will publish
a temporary list in my homepage:

  http://condmat1.ciencias.uniovi.es/~sobrado

(I am not sure about the name of the index file for this project.)
and update it with information about current status of this work.

I will submit patches to the NetBSD Foundation as soon as possible.

Thanks for your interest, I am very happy for contributing with those
patches to the project.

Cheers,
Igor.

-- 
Igor Sobrado, UK34436 - sobrado@acm.org