[xml/sgml-pkgs] Bug#510094: /usr/bin/docbook2x-man: generated manual page contain incorrect encoding header

[Daniel Leidert]

Am Montag, den 29.12.2008, 09:41 +0100 schrieb Arthur de Jong:

> The generated manual pages contain as a first line:
>   '\" -*- coding: us-ascii -*-
> (or whatever encoding is specified) which I've been told indicates that
> preprocessors should be used for a given page (see the DEFAULTS section
> of the man(1) manual page).

Correct.

> This causes problems when viewing the manual page with the version of
> man from etch (the version of lenny seems to work around this).
> 
> It has been suggested that changing the line to:
>   .\" -*- coding: us-ascii -*-
> should fix the problem.

man(1) states:

> To contain a valid preprocessor string, the first line must resemble
> 
>        '\" <string>

so there is a "must" to start with an apostrophe. This has also been
reported as Debian bug #442782.

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=442782
http://www.gnu.org/software/groff/manual/html_node/Preprocessors-in-man-pages.html

Colin there also stated, that man-db only supports (or at least
supported) the "correct" usage, starting with an apostrophe.

Now you want me to revert the patch to fix #442782. But following the
documentation, the patch is correct. Unfortunately it makes manual pages
under Etch unreadable. That's a difficult situation.

> The roff(7) manual page however suggests putting
> Emacs commands at the end of the file instead.

The encoding line here is for pre-processors, not Emacs.

Regards, Daniel