On Thu, Jan 02, 2020 at 11:52:06AM -0500, J William Piggott wrote:
> On Thu, 2 Jan 2020, Bjarni Ingi Gislason wrote:
> > Comment the font-escape line and
> > add the font-macro line after it.
>
> If I had submitted a patch like that it would have been rejected
> (although I would not do that to a production man page anyway).
Well, frankly... I don't like man-page (re)formatting patches :-)
It's maintainer's nightmare -- always is there someone who hates the
change, it's difficult review all the details and keep all consistent
if you have large collection of man pages from different
sources/authors, etc.
For me the best would be to maintain *content* in some formatting
independent data format like AsciiDoc or DocBook, and before release
or during package build process generate wanted output according a
user-specified template; it's only a way how to support user or distro
specific point of view.
For example asciidoctor (AsciiDoc backend) is actively maintained and
used by projects like github. Not sure about readability of the final
man pages, but it seems that AsciiDoc -> DocBook -> man page is
possible way.
And for example systemd guys maintain man pages directly in XML DocBook.
IMHO it's way to go rather than for ever play "color of bike shed"
game with our man pages.
“Content is King” :-) Volunteers?
Karel
--
Karel Zak <kzak@xxxxxxxxxx>
http://karelzak.blogspot.com
