Bug#175141: checkinstall: man page contains unescaped dot at start of line
Package: checkinstall
Version: 1.5.3-1
Severity: normal
On Fri, Jan 03, 2003 at 12:26:01AM -0600, Jason Pepas wrote:
> On Thursday 02 January 2003 10:47 pm, Colin Watson wrote:
> > Fine; I'd still like to know what's on and around line 106 of that man
> > page.
>
> (pts/2)jason@marsala:/tmp$ zcat /usr/share/man/man1/checkinstall.1.gz >
> foo.zcat
> (pts/2)jason@marsala:/tmp$ zcat /usr/share/man/man1/checkinstall.1.gz | groff
> -mandoc - > foo.groff
> <standard input>:106: warning: `spec' not defined (probable missing space
> after `sp')
>
> so it appears the problem in the stream is the output of zcat, so probably a
> problem in the manpage itself
>
> (pts/2)jason@marsala:/tmp$ cat -n foo.zcat | grep -a3 106
> 103 .IP "\fB--dpkgflags=[flags]\fP " 10
> 104 Pass these flags to the dpkg (.deb) installer
> 105 .IP "\fB--spec=[path]\fP " 10
> 106 .spec file location
> 107 .IP "\fB--nodoc\fP " 10
> 108 Do not include documentacion files
> 109 .IP "\fB-d[0,1,2]\fP " 10
>
> from looking at the rest of the document, ".SH" appears to be some kind of
> formatting keyword, so I guess it is problem with the man page itself.
Yes, it is. ".spec" at the start of a line is interpreted by groff as a
request. "\&", a zero-width space, should be prepended to this line as
an escaping mechanism. (This is documented in 'info groff', "gtroff
Reference", "Embedded Commands", "Requests".)
In other words, lines 105 and 106 above should be:
.IP "\fB--spec=[path]\fP " 10
\&.spec file location
I see the man page is generated by docbook-to-man; see bug #111919. If
necessary I guess the wording will have to be temporarily adjusted to
"location of .spec file" or something.
--
Colin Watson [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]
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