Jean Delvare <khali at linux-fr.org>: > This change, as is, is certainly not acceptable as it discards an > information I consider important for the reader. In that case, you'kll vbe stuck as one of the 4% or fewer man pages that does not convert. > BTW, why doesn't DocBook accept parenthesized comments in synopsis? The DTD for synopsis-syntax structure doesn't allow it. > DocBook is mostly XML if I'm not mistaking, I don't see how parentheses > cause any problem. What are you going to do for C manual pages, which > all have parentheses in their synopsis? Another subset of the DTD expresses function syntax. Doclifter can translate to that. > Anyway, if there is a solid reason why DocBook cannot cope with that, > and if it is not going to be improved, I cannot see why manual pages > would need to be changed for that. The syntax used in this manual page > doesn't break any standard as far as I know. If DocBook cannot accept > it, then your "doclifter" converter simply has to learn how to handle > that case. Either drop the parenthesized comment, or (better) find an > alternate syntax to replace the parentheses. Doesn't sound that complex, > does it? There isn't any room in the DTD for an alternate syntax. And one of doclifter's design rules is not to throw away information, which is why I prefer to negotiate changes with manual page maintainers. Is there some other way you can come up with to convey that information without having it embedded in the option syntax? -- <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a>
