Subject: Re: volunteers to fix catman?
To: Kevin P. Neal <kpneal@pobox.com>
From: Perry E. Metzger <perry@piermont.com>
List: tech-userlevel
Date: 09/14/1998 19:10:35
"Kevin P. Neal" writes:
> The current problem (thanks for bringing this up) is that the man.conf
> doesn't have any way of specifying _where_ cat'd files should go. 
> 
> There isn't really a way to pair up an unformatted directory with a
> formatted directory. What's a good way of doing this?

you could just assume that the unformatted directories and formatted
directories will be in parallel.

> We could add a directive for specifying paths like "../cat1", but we would
> need a way to tie this to specific sets of directories. Perhaps:
> 
> _fmtdir /usr/{share,X11R6,blahblah}/man/man1 ../cat1
> 
> Plus, a list of directories acquired from _fmtdir directives could be the
> list of directories catman searches (along with those from _default). 
> 
> Opinions? Suggestions?

Just one thing to keep in mind: traditional catman(8) had the ability
to generate troff'ed pre-formatted man pages. You should make sure
that we don't make that capability difficult to add. (Indeed, if you
have a chance, you should actually add it.)

Perry