Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2003 16:20:58 -0400 From: Chuck Swiger <cswiger@mac.com> To: chris-freebsd@randomcamel.net Cc: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: A patch to man to handle "man.1"... Message-ID: <3F1C4B2A.7090107@mac.com> In-Reply-To: <20030721192952.GE23226@zot.electricrain.com> References: <3F19C78A.7030008@mac.com> <20030719233535.GF77396@sunbay.com> <3F19D8D3.1040401@mac.com> <87vftyoy91.fsf@inf.enst.fr> <20030721192952.GE23226@zot.electricrain.com>
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Chris Doherty wrote: [ ... ] > seems pretty simple: > > 1) first check to see if there's a manpage for the literal argument > (e.g. "ld-elf.so.1") > > 2) if that fails, treat the trailing digit as a section > specifier--i.e. look for "ld-elf.so" in section 1. > > 3) if that also fails, report that not only was there a "ld-elf.so.1" in > any section, but there was also no "ld-elf.so" in section 1. > > does that cover all cases? seems like this is a useful syntax to add > on--anything to make man(7) more usable is a good thing IMO. :-) Thanks for the vote in favor of the proposed syntax, as well as for your thoughts about an implementation that would remain backwards compatible. The only difficulty is that I would probably choose to re-write 'man' from scratch rather than try to make non-localized/extensive changes to the existing code. This can be explained simply, even: the function is_section() has side effects and changes some global variable named 'longsec' which relates to the 'shortsec' variable seen in my patch in ways that I don't want to understand further. :-) On the other hand, are there any other implementations of 'man' around? I seem to recall something called 'polaris' which implemented browsable links between manpages (similar to GNU info pages, come to think of it)...? -- -Chuck
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