[gentoo-dev] man pages - converted to DocBook/HTML

[gentoo-dev] man pages - converted to DocBook/HTML

[Mark Miller]

I was wondering if the Gentoo Development team would be interested in
a Python script that would automatically convert all the troff and all
the other formats of man pages into a DocBook format, which HTML can
easily be generated out of, and incorporate this into the Gentoo
system.

-- 
Mark A. Miller
mark@mirell.org
(US) +1 512-796-3592

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Re: [gentoo-dev] man pages - converted to DocBook/HTML

[Mike Frysinger]

On Monday 29 November 2004 02:36 am, Mark Miller wrote:
> I was wondering if the Gentoo Development team would be interested in
> a Python script that would automatically convert all the troff and all
> the other formats of man pages into a DocBook format, which HTML can
> easily be generated out of, and incorporate this into the Gentoo
> system.

for what purpose ?  to have HTML versions of all manpages that exist ?
-mike

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Re: [gentoo-dev] man pages - converted to DocBook/HTML

[Grant Goodyear]

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Vapier wrote: [Mon Nov 29 2004, 09:17:20AM CST]
> On Monday 29 November 2004 02:36 am, Mark Miller wrote:
> > I was wondering if the Gentoo Development team would be interested in
> > a Python script that would automatically convert all the troff and all
> > the other formats of man pages into a DocBook format, which HTML can
> > easily be generated out of, and incorporate this into the Gentoo
> > system.
> 
> for what purpose ?  to have HTML versions of all manpages that exist ?
> -mike

I've always been really impressed with the *BSDs online manpage
databases, but those databases make more sense for the monolithic *BSDs
than they do for the quite heterogeneous Linux distros.  That said, I do
think that it would be nice if we had the man pages for Gentoo tools
available online.  I would suggest using man2html instead of a full
conversion to docbook, however.

Let's see, that would mean converting the man pages in portage,
certainly, as well as those in gentoolkit and gentoolkit-dev.  It looks
like baselayout also includes some man pages, and I believe that I
included man pages for our mailwrapper package.  Are there other
Gentoo-specific man pages that we should include?  Should we also
include the tenshi and keychain man pages since they're predominantly
Gentoo projects?  Oh, what about the various *-config programs' man
pages?

-g2boojum-
-- 
Grant Goodyear	
Gentoo Developer
g2boojum@gentoo.org
http://www.gentoo.org/~g2boojum
GPG Fingerprint: D706 9802 1663 DEF5 81B0  9573 A6DC 7152 E0F6 5B76

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Re: [gentoo-dev] man pages - converted to DocBook/HTML

[Mark Miller]

The issue with using man2html is the fact that apparently a lot of the
man pages are ill-formated, from what I've seen. And another benefit
with the DocBook format is the ability to properly form indices, with
greater ease.

On Mon, 29 Nov 2004 14:48:57 -0600, Grant Goodyear <g2boojum@gentoo.org> wrote
> Vapier wrote: [Mon Nov 29 2004, 09:17:20AM CST]
> 
> 
> > On Monday 29 November 2004 02:36 am, Mark Miller wrote:
> > > I was wondering if the Gentoo Development team would be interested in
> > > a Python script that would automatically convert all the troff and all
> > > the other formats of man pages into a DocBook format, which HTML can
> > > easily be generated out of, and incorporate this into the Gentoo
> > > system.
> >
> > for what purpose ?  to have HTML versions of all manpages that exist ?
> > -mike
> 
> I've always been really impressed with the *BSDs online manpage
> databases, but those databases make more sense for the monolithic *BSDs
> than they do for the quite heterogeneous Linux distros.  That said, I do
> think that it would be nice if we had the man pages for Gentoo tools
> available online.  I would suggest using man2html instead of a full
> conversion to docbook, however.
> 
> Let's see, that would mean converting the man pages in portage,
> certainly, as well as those in gentoolkit and gentoolkit-dev.  It looks
> like baselayout also includes some man pages, and I believe that I
> included man pages for our mailwrapper package.  Are there other
> Gentoo-specific man pages that we should include?  Should we also
> include the tenshi and keychain man pages since they're predominantly
> Gentoo projects?  Oh, what about the various *-config programs' man
> pages?
> 
> -g2boojum-
> --
> Grant Goodyear
> Gentoo Developer
> g2boojum@gentoo.org
> http://www.gentoo.org/~g2boojum
> GPG Fingerprint: D706 9802 1663 DEF5 81B0  9573 A6DC 7152 E0F6 5B76
> 
> 
> 


-- 
Mark A. Miller
mark@mirell.org
(US) +1 512-796-3592

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Re: [gentoo-dev] man pages - converted to DocBook/HTML

[Carsten Lohrke]

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On Monday 29 November 2004 08:36, Mark Miller wrote:
> I was wondering if the Gentoo Development team would be interested in
> a Python script that would automatically convert all the troff and all
> the other formats of man pages into a DocBook format, which HTML can
> easily be generated out of, and incorporate this into the Gentoo
> system.

Use Konqueror and type "man:foo" in the address edit field and you'll get your 
html man page.


Carsten

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Re: [gentoo-dev] man pages - converted to DocBook/HTML

[John Davis]

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On Mon, 2004-11-29 at 22:20 +0100, Carsten Lohrke wrote:
> On Monday 29 November 2004 08:36, Mark Miller wrote:
> > I was wondering if the Gentoo Development team would be interested in
> > a Python script that would automatically convert all the troff and all
> > the other formats of man pages into a DocBook format, which HTML can
> > easily be generated out of, and incorporate this into the Gentoo
> > system.
> 
> Use Konqueror and type "man:foo" in the address edit field and you'll get your 
> html man page.
> 
> 
> Carsten

Because all of the world uses KDE/ Konqueror ... ;)

Cheers,
//John

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Re: [gentoo-dev] man pages - converted to DocBook/HTML

[Carsten Lohrke]

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On Monday 29 November 2004 22:56, John Davis wrote:
> Because all of the world uses KDE/ Konqueror ... ;)

I assumed that Gnomes Nautilus or whatever you may use as pendant is capable 
to do so, too, of course. :) But apparently creating html out of man pages 
wasn't Mark's main topic. I for one don't care so much about it, just don't 
want to have it in multiple engrossment.


Carsten

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Re: [gentoo-dev] man pages - converted to DocBook/HTML

[Mark Miller]

HTML wasn't the main thing that was the issue. Converting the man
pages from the ancient realm of troff into DocBook would actually be
the main issue.

With a properly formatted DocBook format, you can get your HTML,
XHTML, even PDF if you so desire.

The man page system is an ancient rendition of how to nicely set up a
book in directories, with the different directories different chapters
in your book when you printed it out, done, in, a typesetting
language, troff.

I don't know about you, but I surely would not print out _all_ of my
man pages to put into a binder.

This system needs a major overhaul. That's why I was helping Eric test
the 8,000 some odd line Python script he's written to be able to
automatically convert the troff/etc into DocBook XML format.


On Mon, 29 Nov 2004 22:20:09 +0100, Carsten Lohrke <carlo@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On Monday 29 November 2004 08:36, Mark Miller wrote:
> > I was wondering if the Gentoo Development team would be interested in
> > a Python script that would automatically convert all the troff and all
> > the other formats of man pages into a DocBook format, which HTML can
> > easily be generated out of, and incorporate this into the Gentoo
> > system.
> 
> Use Konqueror and type "man:foo" in the address edit field and you'll get your
> html man page.
> 
> 
> Carsten
> 
> 
> 

-- 
Mark A. Miller
mark@mirell.org
(US) +1 512-796-3592

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Re: [gentoo-dev] man pages - converted to DocBook/HTML

[Mike Frysinger]

On Monday 29 November 2004 04:59 pm, Mark Miller wrote:
> This system needs a major overhaul. That's why I was helping Eric test
> the 8,000 some odd line Python script he's written to be able to
> automatically convert the troff/etc into DocBook XML format.

ok, so are you proposing (like the GNU peeps), to get rid of 'man' ?  to use 
some 'other' program (like the stupid GNU peeps force info on you ?) ?
-mike

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Re: [gentoo-dev] man pages - converted to DocBook/HTML

[M. Edward Borasky]

On Mon, 2004-11-29 at 15:59 -0600, Mark Miller wrote:
> HTML wasn't the main thing that was the issue. Converting the man
> pages from the ancient realm of troff into DocBook would actually be
> the main issue.

[snip]

While we're on the subject of on-line documentation, Debian has a really
nice way of doing it, using something they call "dwww". However, I
looked at the source and there's quite a bit of Debian-specific code in
it, so it might be more trouble than it's worth.



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