Package: man-db Version: 2.8.5-1 Severity: normal Dear Maintainer,
modern computers are now that fast, that the text from standard error gets rolled out of sight without noticing. This can be seen by adding a '.tm' lines with text, for example early, in the middle and at the end of a big file and a small one, for example bash(1) and test(1). I have had to write a script to catch the output of standard error in a temporary file. a) if the file is empty it is deleted b) if not, a message is displayed when "man" is quit to inform the user about it, and asked if he wants to see it. c) No: file deleted Yes: file is read with the pager (less). After that the user is asked if he wants to keep it or delete it. Such a procedure should be part of the "man" program. If the user selects '--warning=...' the warnings are only sent to the terminal if the environmental variable "MAN_KEEP_STDERR" is set, and then it is improbable that the user notices something strange and rolls the screen down. There should be a notice about this where "--warning" is explained, otherwise no warning can be noticed (if one has a fast enough computer) in the usual interactive mode, which is the most common one. "man" should abort with an error message, if '--warning' is selected without "MAN_KEEP_STDERR" being active in the interactive mode. I think that practically all users of "man" do not type a redirection for the standard error as man pages should already be clean in this regard, but my experience shows that is not the case. -- System Information: Debian Release: buster/sid APT prefers stable-updates APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'proposed-updates'), (500, 'testing'), (500, 'stable') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Kernel: Linux 4.9.144-1 (SMP w/2 CPU cores) Locale: LANG=is_IS.iso88591, LC_CTYPE=is_IS.iso88591 (charmap=ISO-8859-1), LANGUAGE=is_IS.iso88591 (charmap=ISO-8859-1) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash Init: sysvinit (via /sbin/init) Versions of packages man-db depends on: ii bsdmainutils 11.1.2+b1 ii debconf [debconf-2.0] 1.5.70 ii dpkg 1.19.2 ii groff-base 1.22.4-2 ii libc6 2.28-6 ii libgdbm6 1.18.1-2 ii libpipeline1 1.5.1-1 ii libseccomp2 2.3.3-3 ii zlib1g 1:1.2.11.dfsg-1 man-db recommends no packages. Versions of packages man-db suggests: pn apparmor <none> ii firefox-esr [www-browser] 60.5.1esr-1~deb9u1 ii groff 1.22.4-2 ii less 487-0.1+b1 ii lynx [www-browser] 2.8.9rel.1-3 ii w3m [www-browser] 0.5.3-37 -- debconf information: man-db/auto-update: true man-db/install-setuid: false -- Bjarni I. Gislason