Hello Helge, Helge Kreutzmann a écrit :
> > > Secondly we translators see the manpages in the neutral po format, > > > i.e. converted and harmonized, but not the original source (be it man, > > > groff, xml or other). So we cannot provide a true patch (where > > > possible), but only an approximation which you need to convert into > > > your source format. > > > > The original format for Debian's manpages regarding cron is groff. Would the translators' work become easier if the manpages were rewritten in some higher-level language than groff? I must admit that I am not at ease with groff sources, and that I use weird hacks when modifying such or such part of a manpage when some feature of cron or crontab is changed. The source in groff format often contains very short lines, where more context would be necessary to grasp the sense. So, please tell me whether it would be useful to rewrite the three manpages in XML format? This would mean writing sensible paragraphs, with lines of seventy or more characters, containing simple text and elements marked by tags like <command></command> or <replaceable class="option"></replaceable>, which convey more sense than the bare bold/italics directives available in groff. > That's usual, but po4a transforms this in a more friendly format for > us translators. Here is what I understood so far, from the first e-mail you sent me yesterday, and from the enlightenments provided by the second one: Each report chunk is divided in two parts, a list of issues and a context string, which I describe below in some wild meta-language using square brackets: --------------------------------------------------------------------- Man page: [source file] Issue #n: [incorrect format] → [fixed format] ... "[some context, extracted by po4a from the source file]" "..." -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- Please can you confirm or infirm that the interpretation above can be trusted? > I think most of the report boils down that you update the patches by > using .B instead of .I or sometimes .BI This is a particular consequence of a more general guideline, to follow recommendations provided by `man man-pages`. I would feel more at ease if this compliance was ensured by an automated process fed by a source file with high-level syntactic markup. > P.S. And since there is probably little changes in cron nowadays, most > likely few if none further reports from my side… I began to maintain cron two years ago, and lowered the bug report count by approximately one half (regarding reports in bugs.debian.org). Some reports entailed creating new features, and modifying the manuals accordingly. I fear that the fifty remaining bug reports will slowly, but surely involve future changes in man pages, so rewriting them in a high-level language would probably make future changes more consistent. Please can you consider this proposition? I would rewrite an XML source for the manpage crontab.1, and send it; then you run your tools (probably po4a), and send me a feedback to tell me whether I introduced more inconsistencies than the count of fixes. Thank you in advance for your response. Best regards, Georges
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