Your message dated Tue, 21 Apr 2026 10:50:22 +0000
with message-id <[email protected]>
and subject line Re: Bug#1062983: Developers Reference in A4 instead of US
Letter
has caused the Debian Bug report #1062983,
regarding Developers Reference in A4 instead of US Letter
to be marked as done.
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1062983: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1062983
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--- Begin Message ---
Package: developers-reference
Version: 13.4
I just downloaded the developers-reference from
https://www.debian.org/doc/devel-manuals and I noticed that it is being
formatted in US Letter. While this may be the preferred format for US
users, the rest of the world is using A4 sized pages. I am not sure if
there is any recommendation in Debian to choose a paper size for
documentation.
I went over some common Debian user and developer manuals and noticed
that there is a mix of paper sized, but the A4 format seems to be most
common:
* https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-faq/debian-faq.en.pdf (A4)
* https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/refcard/refcard.en.pdf (A4)
*
https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-reference/debian-reference.en.pdf
(A4)
*
https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/hamradio-maintguide/hamradio-maintguide.en.pdf
(letter)
* https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/policy.pdf (letter)
* https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debmake-doc/debmake-doc.en.pdf (A4)
* https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/maint-guide/maint-guide.en.pdf (A4)
May I request, that:
a) We switch to A4 as the default format for the developers-reference
since that is the format used by most of the world.
b) We consider offering both formats on the Debian manuals page, so that
users can choose their preferred format.
In general it would be nice to have a consistent solution for all
documents. I often like to print the manuals and then its a bit odd to
see the large US letter margins on an A4 page.
Given that all PDFs are build automated pipelines, its probably possible
that we automatically build both formats and introduce a general
mechanism on https://www.debian.org/doc/
that allows users to choose their preferred format?
Kind Regards
Sebastian Geiger
--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
On Tue, Apr 21, 2026 at 01:00:45AM +0200, Serafeim (Serafi) Zanikolas wrote:
> no idea when exactly the change happened, but marking as fixed anyway as
> there's
> little value in keeping the bug open. if somebody really cares about letter
> size, look into https://github.com/sphinx-doc/sphinx/issues/3617
actually closing the bug now too, thanks.
--
cheers,
Holger
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⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ holger@(debian|reproducible-builds|layer-acht).org
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figures don't lie, but liars figure.
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