Bug#273084: marked as forwarded (pdftex.1.gz: --help has basic info that man page lacks)
Your message dated Sat, 25 Sep 2004 10:25:03 +0200
with message-id <871xgqkb6o.fsf@alhambra.bioz.unibas.ch>
has caused the Debian Bug report #273084,
regarding pdftex.1.gz: --help has basic info that man page lacks
to be marked as having been forwarded to the upstream software
author(s) ntg-pdftex@ntg.nl.
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Received: (at 273084-forwarded) by bugs.debian.org; 25 Sep 2004 08:38:06 +0000
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To: ntg-pdftex@ntg.nl
Cc: 273084-forwarded@bugs.debian.org, Dan Jacobson <jidanni@jidanni.org>
Subject: Re: Bug#273084: pdftex.1.gz: --help has basic info that man page
lacks
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From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Frank_K=FCster?= <frank@debian.org>
Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2004 10:25:03 +0200
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Hi pdftex team,
a user of our Debian package containing pdftex suggested some changes to
the man page, along the lines of the text displayed with "pdftex --help".
Dan Jacobson <jidanni@jidanni.org> wrote:
[I pointed him to the sentence that refers the user to the "info file or
manual Web2C]
> f> The complete documentation for this version of TeX can be found
> f> in the info file ...
> $ info pdftex
> gets the manpage.
>
> Wait, I see, you should say
>
> The complete documentation for this version of TeX can be found in the
> Info manual Web2C: A TeX implementation.
>
> or something like that.
You see, the "or" between 'info file' and 'manual' could be understand
in the sense that there are two files.
> f> What wording would you suggest?
>
> SYNOPSIS should agree with --help:
>
> pdftex [OPTION]... [TEXNAME[.tex]] [COMMANDS]
The TEXNAME[.tex] part is missing currently. Probably it's better to use
pdftex [options] [TeX-commands] [texname[.tex] | TeX-commands]
to indicate that one can combine TeX-commands at the beginning with an
input file.
> [or use lower case.]
The help message with its uppercase arguments is probably from one of
Knuth's files, isn't it?
>=20
> Indeed, you could move the pdftex --help section running from
>
> Run pdfTeX on TEXNAME, usually creating TEXNAME.pdf.
> to
> If no arguments or options are specified, prompt for input.
>
> to the man page, because it rather belongs there.
Sorry, no patch - I don't understand how pdftex.man is generated from
the m4 file.
Regards, Frank
--=20
Frank K=FCster, Biozentrum der Univ. Basel
Abt. Biophysikalische Chemie
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