bugGNU roff - Bugs: bug #61900, ship groff-man-pages.pdf

 
 

bug #61900: ship groff-man-pages.pdf

Submitter:  G. Branden Robinson <gbranden>
Submitted:  Sun 23 Jan 2022 10:54:31 AM UTC
   
 
Category:  General Severity:  1 - Wish
Item Group:  Documentation Status:  Fixed
Privacy:  Public Assigned to:  gbranden
Open/Closed:  Closed Planned Release:  1.23.0
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Mon 24 Jan 2022 04:55:41 PM UTC, comment #1: 


commit 52eeb52073806d09e24e35b38ba586d0b4d1f6e1
Author: G. Branden Robinson <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com>
Date:   Tue Jan 25 00:00:19 2022 +1100

    [man pages]: Ship compilations in UTF-8 text, PDF.

    Localization support and the resolution of Savannah #61266 have made it
    practical to batch-render all of groff's man pages as a single giant
    document.  Provide PDF and UTF-8 text (with ECMA-48 escape sequences,
    but not the italic attribute or OSC 8 sequences).

    Reasons for this addition include: {1} it is now possible, whereas I
    don't believe it was in any previous groff release; {2} many people
    still don't realize how much more pleasant reading typeset man pages can
    be (while a subjective assessment, I'm not alone[1]); {3} providing
    these forms permits full-text searching of groff's entire man page
    corpus via the PDF viewer or a pager like "less -R", the latter without
    sacrificing the style variations of the text that aid the reader to
    comprehend the material; {4} sentimentally, it honors the 50th
    anniversary of the first Unix manual (dated 3 November 1971)
    <https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/1stEdman.html>.

    * doc/doc.am (PROCESSEDDOCFILES): Add
      'doc/groff-man-pages.{pdf,utf8.txt}'.

      (GROFF_MAN_PAGES{1,2,3}): Add new macro storing names of all man pages
      generated in the build tree.  Motivate the reason for 3 variables in a
      comment (it's due to groff locale switching).

      (GROFF_MAN_PAGES_ALL): Add convenience macro for use in dependency
      lists required by...

      ('doc/groff-man-pages.{pdf,utf8.txt}'): ...these targets.  Generate
      pages with the lint dial turned all the way up.

    Fixes <https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?61900>.

    [1] "The manual was intended to be typeset; some detail is sacrificed on
    terminals." (man(1), _Unix Time-Sharing System Programmer's Manual_,
    Eighth Edition, Volume 1, February 1985)

    Also bump copyright range.  Today's commit to the file should do it for
    2022; for 2021, see below.  It wasn't _all_ mindless churn, I promise.

    $ COLUMNS=72 git diff --stat 'HEAD@{2020-12-31}' 'HEAD@{2021-12-31}' \
     -- doc/doc.am
     doc/doc.am | 316 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++----------------------
     1 file changed, 188 insertions(+), 128 deletions(-)


G. Branden Robinson <gbranden>
Group administrator
Sun 23 Jan 2022 10:54:31 AM UTC, original submission:  

Since the demise of bug #61266 in early October there has been no major barrier to this, and now that we can get cleanly into and out of Swedish localization tomfoolery for groff_mmse(7), there isn't a minor one either.

So maybe one of the nice things to do for groff 1.23.0 is commemorate (just over) 50 years of the first Unix manual, a humble collection of man pages.  That document, which can be found at https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/1stEdman.html , weighs in at 194 pages, including 4 pages of introduction, another four for a table of contents, and another 11 of permuted index.  (It would have been 195 pages, but someone removed Ossanna's copy of "ascii(VII)"--I imagine it taped to a wall above his desk, though I don't know what that, or he, looked like.)

This manual weighs in at 380 pages, has no front matter, and packs many more characters to a page.

It supplements, but does not quite supplant, our Texinfo manual.  See bug #60061.


G. Branden Robinson <gbranden>
Group administrator

 

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    Follow 4 latest changes.

    Date Changed by Updated Field Previous Value => Replaced by
    2022-01-24 gbranden StatusIn Progress Fixed
        Open/ClosedOpen Closed
        Planned ReleaseNone 1.23.0
    2022-01-24 gbranden StatusNone In Progress

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