Bug#440420: [PROPOSAL] Manual page encoding
On Sat, Sep 01, 2007 at 01:02:33PM +0100, Colin Watson wrote:
> --- orig/policy.sgml
> +++ mod/policy.sgml
> @@ -8450,6 +8450,39 @@
> be present in the future.
> </footnote>
> </p>
> +
> + <p>
> + Manual pages that are installed under
> + <file>/usr/share/man/</file><var>ll</var>, where <var>ll</var>
Please use <file>/usr/share/man/<var>ll</var></file> as ll is part of
the filename.
> + is an ISO-639 language code, must be encoded with the usual
> + legacy (non-UTF-8) character set for that language, as shown
> + by:
> + <example compact="compact">
> +egrep -v '\.|@|UTF-8' /usr/share/i18n/SUPPORTED
You are aware of the fact that some languages such as Vietnamese have a
8 bit encoding but do not match this regular expression
(vi_VN.TCVN TCVN5712-1)?
> + At present, it is not generally possible to install a manual
> + page encoded in UTF-8 such that it will be used in all locales
> + for that language (for example, a page installed under
> + <file>/usr/share/man/fr_FR.UTF-8</file> will not be used in
> + the <tt>fr_BE.UTF-8</tt> locale). It is therefore not yet
> + recommended to install pages encoded in UTF-8, but rather to
> + continue using the legacy encoding.<footnote>This is expected
> + to change as of man-db 2.5.0.</footnote>
Maybe it would be a good idea to explain what to do with non supported
encodings these days. What to do with a Vietnamese page? Installing it
now UTF-8 encoded into vi.UTF-8/ seems fine to me but you write "not yet
recommended"!
> 1. Status at time of writing: packages should use only
> /usr/share/man/<ll>/ (although some packages have anticipated an
Except for languages not yet supported by a classical encoding ...
> 5. Update dh_installman to recode manual pages to UTF-8 automatically
> and install them under /usr/share/man/<ll>.UTF-8/. Getting the
This requires an option to specify the encoding of the manual page. Or
assume UTF-8 by default for all languages not having a matching regular
expression.
> Conflicts:/Breaks: in here might be difficult, plus I'm not sure
Why not just ignoring this? If updating man-db is sufficient let's
ignore dependencies. (If a HTML documentation file uses the new
(fictitious) HTML version 9 there is no need to list all browsers
supporting this in the dependencies.)
Jens
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