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Re: RFS: nemesis (updated package)



On Wed, Jul 02, 2008 at 05:13:14PM +0200, Andreas Wenning wrote:
> On Wed, 2008-07-02 at 16:38 +0200, Cyril Brulebois wrote:
> > Andreas Wenning <subscriptions@awen.dk> (02/07/2008):
> > > Running "lintian -I" against the generated .deb gives a lot of "I:
> > > nemesis: hyphen-used-as-minus-sign". There was a discussion on this list
> > > about how to change this within the last few weeks, but can't seem to
> > > find the message just now.
> > 
> > The complete lintian message (“long description”) should help you find
> > references, and learn how to fix this.
> 
> It explains what the problem exactly is; but when the man-pages are
> supplied by upstream patching all of them might not be the best
> solution. I remember a message containing a sed command that might be
> helpful, and managed to find it now:
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-mentors/2008/06/msg00416.html

Just for the record, unfortunately, sometimes patching upstream's
manual pages is the only correct solution.  There are cases when
the "-" character appears in a manual page in both roles - as
"a minus sign" and as a "real" hyphen.  For example, look at my
proposed changes to the xvkbd package in bug #484490 - these include
a patch to the manual page that changes "-" to "\-" in *some* cases,
but not always; there are uses like "UNIX-like" and "upper-case" when
the hyphen is indeed a hyphen.  Thus, an automated "escape all hyphens"
is not always a correct solution, though it is usually the easiest :)

Somewhat off-topic, but, well, that's one of the less important reasons
why I always write mdoc manual pages :)

G'luck,
Peter

-- 
Peter Pentchev	roam@ringlet.net    roam@cnsys.bg    roam@FreeBSD.org
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If the meanings of 'true' and 'false' were switched, then this sentence wouldn't be false.

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