FTP Repository all man pages?

[jeremy ardley]

Is there any FTP repository that holds all the current Jessie man page 
files in one location?


I have tried various scripts and wget to extract man pages from 
https://manpages.debian.org/jessie/ but my scripting ability lacks somewhat.


Jeremy

Re: odd question re man pages

[gene heskett]

On Friday, January 7, 2022 6:38:14 PM EST Ralph Katz wrote:
> On 1/7/22 03:01, gene heskett wrote:
> ...
> 
> > I've noted that there can be links to a web page in a man page that are
> > underscored if you click on them while reading the man page, but
> > clicking
> > the link does not do anything.  Is it supposed to send the default
> > browser to that page? If so, where should I check for the broken
> > linkage?
> Hi Gene,
> In xfce-terminal, right click, preferences, advanced tab, use
> middle-click to open URLs.  Or Ctrl-left click if not enabled for
> middle-click.
> 
> Regards,
> Ralph
> 
> .
You da man, it works.  Thank you!


Cheers, Gene Heskett.
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis
Genes Web page 

Re: odd question re man pages

[Ralph Katz]

On 1/7/22 03:01, gene heskett wrote:
...

I've noted that there can be links to a web page in a man page that are
underscored if you click on them while reading the man page, but clicking
the link does not do anything.  Is it supposed to send the default browser
to that page? If so, where should I check for the broken linkage?


Hi Gene,
In xfce-terminal, right click, preferences, advanced tab, use 
middle-click to open URLs.  Or Ctrl-left click if not enabled for 
middle-click.


Regards,
Ralph

Re: odd question re man pages

[Curt]

On 2022-01-07, Nate Bargmann  wrote:
>
> I use the Shift + Right-click trick to get the menu in applications that
> seem to block Gnome Terminal's handling of the URL.  I've found the
> trick useful with Mutt and Midnight Commander.
>

I see. I only experimented in a man page. 

Re: odd question re man pages

[Nate Bargmann]

* On 2022 07 Jan 10:26 -0600, Curt wrote:
> On 2022-01-07, Nate Bargmann  wrote:
> >
> > Did you try Shift + Right-click and select "Open Link" or some such in
> > your terminal?  That is what works for me in Gnome Terminal.
> >
> 
> This is what works for me in gnome-terminal:
> 
>  URL detection[edit]
>  GNOME Terminal parses the output and automatically detects snippets of
>  text that appear to be URLs or email addresses.[2] When a user points
>  to a URL, the text is automatically underlined, indicating that the
>  user may click. Upon clicking, the appropriate application will open to
>  access that resource.
> 
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME_Terminal
> 
> Of course, the phrase "the appropriate application will open" is kind of a 
> mixture
> of wishful thinking and convenient simplification, though it should
> normally be your default browser. 

I use the Shift + Right-click trick to get the menu in applications that
seem to block Gnome Terminal's handling of the URL.  I've found the
trick useful with Mutt and Midnight Commander.

- Nate

-- 
"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all
possible worlds.  The pessimist fears this is true."
Web: https://www.n0nb.us
Projects: https://github.com/N0NB
GPG fingerprint: 82D6 4F6B 0E67 CD41 F689 BBA6 FB2C 5130 D55A 8819



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Re: odd question re man pages

[gene heskett]

On Friday, January 7, 2022 6:41:45 AM EST Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
> cat /etc/debian_version
11.2

And now I see how it works since it does that way, thank you.

Cheers, Gene Heskett.
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis
Genes Web page 

Re: odd question re man pages

[gene heskett]

On Friday, January 7, 2022 8:05:59 AM EST Celejar wrote:
> On Fri, 07 Jan 2022 05:59:36 -0500
> gene heskett  wrote:
> 
> ...
> 
> > That is installed, but I can't find a configurator for it.  And I am a
> > heavy user of mc but the file menu popup steals the F10 key, also a
> > pita. But there is not an F10 checked in the settings for xfce or
> > konsole that I can find.
> 
> If you're using xfce4-terminal, look at xfce4-terminal's Edit /
> Preferences / Advanced / Shortcuts / Disable menu shortcut key (F10 by
> default)
> 
> Celejar
> 
> .
You da man Celejar. Thanks.

Cheers, Gene Heskett.
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis
Genes Web page 

Re: odd question re man pages

[gene heskett]

On Friday, January 7, 2022 6:16:21 AM EST David wrote:
> On Fri, 7 Jan 2022 at 21:59, gene heskett  wrote:
> > On Friday, January 7, 2022 5:21:03 AM EST David wrote:
> > > On Fri, 7 Jan 2022 at 21:01, gene heskett  
wrote:
> > > > debian 11.1, 64 bit net-install updated yesterday.
> > > > 
> > > > I've noted that there can be links to a web page in a man page that
> > > > are
> > > > underscored if you click on them while reading the man page, but
> > > > clicking
> > > > the link does not do anything.  Is it supposed to send the default
> > > > browser to that page? If so, where should I check for the broken
> > > > linkage?
> > > 
> > > Hi. Well, you need to install whatever the terminal program calls to
> > > implement this functionality (plus a default browser obviously).
> > > Possibly 'xdg-open' utility in the 'xdg-utils' package. Works here.
> > > It might need configuration, I can't remember. Try it and see.
> > 
> > That is installed, but I can't find a configurator for it.  And I am a
> > heavy user of mc but the file menu popup steals the F10 key, also a
> > pita. But there is not an F10 checked in the settings for xfce or
> > konsole that I can find.
> 
> Did you test it? For example:
>   $ xdg-open http://google.com
> 
> If that works, then look for a way to configure your terminal emulator
> to use it. What terminal emulator are you using? konsole?
> 
> Search for example:
>   "konsole xdg-open how" finds lots of info.
> 
> I can't help with konsole, I don't use it.

Thanks, I'll do the search when I get warmed back up. My furnace failed late 
yesterday afternoon, 7+" of snow and 17F out ths morning. Mite chilly around 
the edges for a guy with diabetic feet.

Cheers, Gene Heskett.
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis
Genes Web page 

Re: odd question re man pages

[Curt]

On 2022-01-07, Nate Bargmann  wrote:
>
> Did you try Shift + Right-click and select "Open Link" or some such in
> your terminal?  That is what works for me in Gnome Terminal.
>

This is what works for me in gnome-terminal:

 URL detection[edit]
 GNOME Terminal parses the output and automatically detects snippets of
 text that appear to be URLs or email addresses.[2] When a user points
 to a URL, the text is automatically underlined, indicating that the
 user may click. Upon clicking, the appropriate application will open to
 access that resource.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME_Terminal

Of course, the phrase "the appropriate application will open" is kind of a 
mixture
of wishful thinking and convenient simplification, though it should
normally be your default browser. 

Re: odd question re man pages

[Nate Bargmann]

* On 2022 07 Jan 04:01 -0600, gene heskett wrote:
> Greetings all;
> 
> debian 11.1, 64 bit net-install updated yesterday.
>  
> I've noted that there can be links to a web page in a man page that are 
> underscored if you click on them while reading the man page, but clicking 
> the link does not do anything.  Is it supposed to send the default browser 
> to that page? If so, where should I check for the broken linkage?

Did you try Shift + Right-click and select "Open Link" or some such in
your terminal?  That is what works for me in Gnome Terminal.

- Nate

-- 
"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all
possible worlds.  The pessimist fears this is true."
Web: https://www.n0nb.us
Projects: https://github.com/N0NB
GPG fingerprint: 82D6 4F6B 0E67 CD41 F689 BBA6 FB2C 5130 D55A 8819



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Description: PGP signature

Re: odd question re man pages

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Fri, Jan 07, 2022 at 08:13:42AM -0500, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 07, 2022 at 01:09:38PM -, Curt wrote:
> > I'd rather just cut and paste the URI in the always-open browser, but
> > then again I've never had that old hacker spirit.
> 
> That's what I do too.  I like my terminals to be relatively frill-free.
> Obviously that's just my preference, and I know some other people are
> the exact opposite.  That's why there are so many different terminal
> emulators.
>

urlview is also useful: I'm fairly sure that's what gives me links in mutt
that will then open in elinks.

Yes, it's terminal dependent. 

All the very best, as ever,

Andy Cater 

Re: odd question re man pages

[Greg Wooledge]

On Fri, Jan 07, 2022 at 01:09:38PM -, Curt wrote:
> I'd rather just cut and paste the URI in the always-open browser, but
> then again I've never had that old hacker spirit.

That's what I do too.  I like my terminals to be relatively frill-free.
Obviously that's just my preference, and I know some other people are
the exact opposite.  That's why there are so many different terminal
emulators.

Re: odd question re man pages

[Curt]

On 2022-01-07, Greg Wooledge  wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 07, 2022 at 11:41:45AM +, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
>> On Fri, Jan 07, 2022 at 05:01:05AM -0500, gene heskett wrote:
>> > I've noted that there can be links to a web page in a man page that are 
>
>> In a terminal: left click might not do anything but right click will bring
>> up a menu for me which allows me to open the link.
>> 
>> So: man apt, for example, has a URL for bugs at the bottom: if I right click
>> that underlined link, I get the option to open it / copy it or whatever.
>
> The behavior is highly specific to the terminal emulator in question.
> We can't guess how Gene's terminal is behaving (or has the capability
> of behaving) without knowing which one it is.
>



It would seem in gnome-terminal (sorry) hyperlinks are
clickable.

For xterm, I guess there are several hoops to jump through:

https://pbrisbin.com/posts/selecting-urls-via-keyboard-in-xterm/

I'd rather just cut and paste the URI in the always-open browser, but
then again I've never had that old hacker spirit.

Re: odd question re man pages

[Celejar]

On Fri, 07 Jan 2022 05:59:36 -0500
gene heskett  wrote:

...

> That is installed, but I can't find a configurator for it.  And I am a heavy 
> user of mc but the file menu popup steals the F10 key, also a pita. But 
> there is not an F10 checked in the settings for xfce or konsole that I can 
> find.

If you're using xfce4-terminal, look at xfce4-terminal's Edit /
Preferences / Advanced / Shortcuts / Disable menu shortcut key (F10 by
default)

Celejar

Re: odd question re man pages

[Greg Wooledge]

On Fri, Jan 07, 2022 at 11:41:45AM +, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 07, 2022 at 05:01:05AM -0500, gene heskett wrote:
> > I've noted that there can be links to a web page in a man page that are 

> In a terminal: left click might not do anything but right click will bring
> up a menu for me which allows me to open the link.
> 
> So: man apt, for example, has a URL for bugs at the bottom: if I right click
> that underlined link, I get the option to open it / copy it or whatever.

The behavior is highly specific to the terminal emulator in question.
We can't guess how Gene's terminal is behaving (or has the capability
of behaving) without knowing which one it is.

I'm using rxvt-unicode, and (at least the way I've got it configured), it
does absolutely nothing with URLs.  They're just strings.  Left-clicking
or right-clicking does the same thing on them that it would do on any
other string, such as an English word, or a Unix pathname, or a mathematical
expression.

That said, if I search for "url" in the rxvt-unicode(1) man page, I get
this section:

   url-launcher: string
   Specifies the program to be started with a URL argument. Used by
   the "selection-popup" and "matcher" perl extensions.

That raises more questions than it gives answers, but at least it tells
me that in some hypothetical configuration of this program, there's a
way that URLs could be identified and acted upon specially.

Gene's terminal may or may not have something similar.

Re: odd question re man pages

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Fri, Jan 07, 2022 at 05:01:05AM -0500, gene heskett wrote:
> Greetings all;
> 
> debian 11.1, 64 bit net-install updated yesterday.
>  
> I've noted that there can be links to a web page in a man page that are 
> underscored if you click on them while reading the man page, but clicking 
> the link does not do anything.  Is it supposed to send the default browser 
> to that page? If so, where should I check for the broken linkage?
> 
> Cheers, Gene Heskett.
> -- 
> "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
>  soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
> -Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
> If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
>  - Louis D. Brandeis
> Genes Web page 
> 

Hi Gene,

First things first - check /etc/debian-version - if you're up to date, that
should be 11.2.

In a terminal: left click might not do anything but right click will bring
up a menu for me which allows me to open the link.

So: man apt, for example, has a URL for bugs at the bottom: if I right click
that underlined link, I get the option to open it / copy it or whatever.

Hope this helps: all the very best, as ever,

Andrew Cater

> 
> 

Re: odd question re man pages

[David]

On Fri, 7 Jan 2022 at 21:59, gene heskett  wrote:
> On Friday, January 7, 2022 5:21:03 AM EST David wrote:
> > On Fri, 7 Jan 2022 at 21:01, gene heskett  wrote:

> > > debian 11.1, 64 bit net-install updated yesterday.

> > > I've noted that there can be links to a web page in a man page that are
> > > underscored if you click on them while reading the man page, but
> > > clicking
> > > the link does not do anything.  Is it supposed to send the default
> > > browser to that page? If so, where should I check for the broken
> > > linkage?

> > Hi. Well, you need to install whatever the terminal program calls to
> > implement this functionality (plus a default browser obviously).
> > Possibly 'xdg-open' utility in the 'xdg-utils' package. Works here.
> > It might need configuration, I can't remember. Try it and see.

> That is installed, but I can't find a configurator for it.  And I am a heavy
> user of mc but the file menu popup steals the F10 key, also a pita. But
> there is not an F10 checked in the settings for xfce or konsole that I can
> find.

Did you test it? For example:
  $ xdg-open http://google.com

If that works, then look for a way to configure your terminal emulator
to use it. What terminal emulator are you using? konsole?

Search for example:
  "konsole xdg-open how" finds lots of info.

I can't help with konsole, I don't use it.

Re: odd question re man pages

[gene heskett]

On Friday, January 7, 2022 5:21:03 AM EST David wrote:
> On Fri, 7 Jan 2022 at 21:01, gene heskett  wrote:
> > debian 11.1, 64 bit net-install updated yesterday.
> > 
> > I've noted that there can be links to a web page in a man page that are
> > underscored if you click on them while reading the man page, but
> > clicking
> > the link does not do anything.  Is it supposed to send the default
> > browser to that page? If so, where should I check for the broken
> > linkage?
> Hi. Well, you need to install whatever the terminal program calls to
> implement this functionality (plus a default browser obviously).
> Possibly 'xdg-open' utility in the 'xdg-utils' package. Works here.
> It might need configuration, I can't remember. Try it and see.
> 
> .
That is installed, but I can't find a configurator for it.  And I am a heavy 
user of mc but the file menu popup steals the F10 key, also a pita. But 
there is not an F10 checked in the settings for xfce or konsole that I can 
find.

Cheers, Gene Heskett.
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis
Genes Web page 

Re: odd question re man pages

[David]

On Fri, 7 Jan 2022 at 21:01, gene heskett  wrote:

> debian 11.1, 64 bit net-install updated yesterday.
>
> I've noted that there can be links to a web page in a man page that are
> underscored if you click on them while reading the man page, but clicking
> the link does not do anything.  Is it supposed to send the default browser
> to that page? If so, where should I check for the broken linkage?

Hi. Well, you need to install whatever the terminal program calls to
implement this functionality (plus a default browser obviously).
Possibly 'xdg-open' utility in the 'xdg-utils' package. Works here.
It might need configuration, I can't remember. Try it and see.

odd question re man pages

[gene heskett]

Greetings all;

debian 11.1, 64 bit net-install updated yesterday.
 
I've noted that there can be links to a web page in a man page that are 
underscored if you click on them while reading the man page, but clicking 
the link does not do anything.  Is it supposed to send the default browser 
to that page? If so, where should I check for the broken linkage?

Cheers, Gene Heskett.
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis
Genes Web page 

Re: Debian and FSF docs (was: Man pages for gcc)

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Vi, 10 dec 21, 17:17:24, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 10, 2021 at 12:41:01PM +0100, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> 
> > At the very least Debian could split non-free into sections or add more 
> > areas (non-free firmware being another obvious candidate for splitting 
> > out).
> > 
> 
> Do wait a little while and there may well ba e GR to that effect.

I guessed something like this might happen based on Steve's mail to 
-vote ;)

As much as I hate to admit it, the free installer is at the moment a 
major hurdle to new Debian users, but I'm also not convinced a general 
exception for all (distributable) firmware is necessarily the right 
answer either.

Let's see what the Project decides.

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser


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Re: Debian and FSF docs (was: Man pages for gcc)

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Fri, Dec 10, 2021 at 12:41:01PM +0100, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> On Du, 31 oct 21, 17:37:10, Stefan Monnier wrote:
> > > This is because GNU releases their documentation under a different license
> > > than their source code.  And Debian considers the GNU documentation
> > > license to be non-free (rightly so, because it prohibits distributing
> > > modified versions).
> > 
> > FWIW, it's not nearly as clear cut as you make it sound, because it does
> > not prevent distribution of all modified versions.
> > 
> > It does require one particular section to be kept unmodified (IIRC it's
> > the section that promotes the FSF philosophy), but the bulk is Free in
> > the usual sense of allowing redistribution of modified versions.
> 
> As far as I understand[1] further modifications can add other invariant 
> sections as well and humans have demonstrated a remarkable capacity of 
> abusing such loopholes.
>  
> > I find this state of affair rather sad and am disappointed by both
> > Debian and the FSF for not finding a compromise.  It ends up promoting
> > the use of the non-free repository, which I think neither project wants.
> 

It's _not_ a Debian problem in one sense: it's the FSF's licence. Or we 
could say "it's in non-free - not part of Debian - so we really don't care
and if it breaks, well so what"

> At the very least Debian could split non-free into sections or add more 
> areas (non-free firmware being another obvious candidate for splitting 
> out).
> 

Do wait a little while and there may well ba e GR to that effect.

All the very best, as ever,

Andy CAter


> [1] https://wiki.debian.org/GFDLPositionStatement
> 
> Kind regards,
> Andrei
> -- 
> http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser

Re: Debian and FSF docs (was: Man pages for gcc)

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Du, 31 oct 21, 17:37:10, Stefan Monnier wrote:
> > This is because GNU releases their documentation under a different license
> > than their source code.  And Debian considers the GNU documentation
> > license to be non-free (rightly so, because it prohibits distributing
> > modified versions).
> 
> FWIW, it's not nearly as clear cut as you make it sound, because it does
> not prevent distribution of all modified versions.
> 
> It does require one particular section to be kept unmodified (IIRC it's
> the section that promotes the FSF philosophy), but the bulk is Free in
> the usual sense of allowing redistribution of modified versions.

As far as I understand[1] further modifications can add other invariant 
sections as well and humans have demonstrated a remarkable capacity of 
abusing such loopholes.
 
> I find this state of affair rather sad and am disappointed by both
> Debian and the FSF for not finding a compromise.  It ends up promoting
> the use of the non-free repository, which I think neither project wants.

At the very least Debian could split non-free into sections or add more 
areas (non-free firmware being another obvious candidate for splitting 
out).

[1] https://wiki.debian.org/GFDLPositionStatement

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser


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Re: Man pages for gcc

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Du, 07 nov 21, 08:08:51, Emanuel Berg wrote:
> Paul M. Foster wrote:
> 
> > Folks:
> >
> > I'm sure everyone but me knows this, but I can't find a man
> > page for gcc.
> 
> Everyone knows it ... but this question has still been asked
> one zillion times. I personally do not mind one bit you asking
> it here, but Google is faster if you care about such things :)

It probably belongs in an FAQ somewhere, if only there was something 
like that for debian-user... ;)

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser


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Re: Man pages for gcc

[Nicholas Geovanis]

On Sun, Oct 31, 2021, 5:05 PM Nate Bargmann  wrote:

> * On 2021 31 Oct 16:27 -0500, Nicholas Geovanis wrote:
>
> > The info command is what you want for gcc. You may need to install the
> > package for gcc info files. Another set of commands you might need info
> > files for are coreutils. Try "info coreutils".
>
> While info is probably installed, a much better user experience is the
> 'pinfo' package since it uses Lynx like motion and color highlighting
> for hyperlinks.
>

Never used pinfo, thanks. I'll try it. You see, over time my browsers get
more primitive. I'm in the last trench now, it's curl and wget now :-)

Which reminds me, when using windowed character mode tools like these, it's
important to set the terminal type correctly in the Linux sessions
environment variables. But also make sure it lines up with the terminal
type in the terminal emulation software you may be using. Otherwise the
screen is soup.

- Nate
>
> --
> "The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all
> possible worlds.  The pessimist fears this is true."
> Web: https://www.n0nb.us
> Projects: https://github.com/N0NB
> GPG fingerprint: 82D6 4F6B 0E67 CD41 F689 BBA6 FB2C 5130 D55A 8819
>
>

Re: Man pages for gcc

[Nate Bargmann]

* On 2021 31 Oct 16:27 -0500, Nicholas Geovanis wrote:
 
> The info command is what you want for gcc. You may need to install the
> package for gcc info files. Another set of commands you might need info
> files for are coreutils. Try "info coreutils".

While info is probably installed, a much better user experience is the
'pinfo' package since it uses Lynx like motion and color highlighting
for hyperlinks.

- Nate

-- 
"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all
possible worlds.  The pessimist fears this is true."
Web: https://www.n0nb.us
Projects: https://github.com/N0NB
GPG fingerprint: 82D6 4F6B 0E67 CD41 F689 BBA6 FB2C 5130 D55A 8819



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Re: Man pages for gcc

[Dan Ritter]

Paul M. Foster wrote: 
> Folks:
> 
> I'm sure everyone but me knows this, but I can't find a man page for gcc.
> There must be some docs somewhere. First question: why isn't there a man
> page? Second question: what docs are available (or what package provides
> them)? Running Debian 11.

gcc-doc has the man pages; they are in non-free.

Yes, it's ironic.

-dsr-

Re: Man pages for gcc

[Nicholas Geovanis]

On Sun, Oct 31, 2021, 4:07 PM Paul M. Foster 
wrote:

> Folks:
>
> I'm sure everyone but me knows this, but I can't find a man page for
> gcc. There must be some docs somewhere. First question: why isn't there
> a man page? Second question: what docs are available (or what package
> provides them)? Running Debian 11.
>

The info command is what you want for gcc. You may need to install the
package for gcc info files. Another set of commands you might need info
files for are coreutils. Try "info coreutils".

These are Gnu/FSF projects and handled a bit differently. I think you'll
also want the gcc book available at the Gnu gcc site.

Paul
>
>
>

Re: Man pages for gcc

[Greg Wooledge]

On Sun, Oct 31, 2021 at 04:58:34PM -0400, Paul M. Foster wrote:
> I'm sure everyone but me knows this, but I can't find a man page for gcc.
> There must be some docs somewhere. First question: why isn't there a man
> page? Second question: what docs are available (or what package provides
> them)? Running Debian 11.

The documentation for gcc is in a separate package, in the non-free
section.

unicorn:~$ apt-cache show gcc-doc
Package: gcc-doc
Source: gcc-doc-defaults (5:21)
Version: 5:10.1.0-1
[...]
Depends: gcc-10-doc (>= 10.1.0-1~)
[...]
Section: contrib/doc

unicorn:~$ apt-cache show gcc-10-doc
[...]
Section: non-free/doc


This is because GNU releases their documentation under a different license
than their source code.  And Debian considers the GNU documentation
license to be non-free (rightly so, because it prohibits distributing
modified versions).

Man pages for gcc

[Paul M. Foster]

Folks:

I'm sure everyone but me knows this, but I can't find a man page for 
gcc. There must be some docs somewhere. First question: why isn't there 
a man page? Second question: what docs are available (or what package 
provides them)? Running Debian 11.


Paul

Re: A feasible method to add examples to man pages?

[Richard Owlett]

On 06/22/2021 02:21 AM, Curt wrote:

On 2021-06-22, Greg Wooledge  wrote:

On Mon, Jun 21, 2021 at 11:50:22PM +0100, Brian wrote:

On Mon 21 Jun 2021 at 15:25:53 -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:


On 06/21/2021 02:36 PM, Curt wrote:

   curl https://cht.sh/:cht.sh > ~/bin/cht.sh
   chmod +x ~/bin/cht.sh
   cht.sh --standalone-install


I don't understand what those 3 lines are attempting to do.
What should I be reading?


curl(1)
bash(1) (Redirection)
chmod(1)
less ~/bin/cht.sh


Just for the record, there should be a mkdir -p ~/bin in there as
well.  And one might need to log out and back in to get ~/bin into
one's PATH, depending on how one's dot files are set up.  (Manual
modification of PATH is also acceptable.)


That's what I get for blindly copying and pasting the "directions" from
Github. I should've have just told Monnier that the whole shebang
can be installed locally, which renders inoperative his nitpick about
not having the Net when he needs to cheat the most (or most often).



FYI
It may be "operator error", but I get a "Could not install python 
dependencies into the virtual environment" ERROR when trying to install 
on Debian 10.7. The install.log is 6.6kB of messages I don't have the 
background to interpret. A side effect is destruction of the ability to 
consistently edit Profile Preferences. {perhaps also operator error}.

I'll not pursue further.

Re: A feasible method to add examples to man pages?

[rhkramer]

On Tuesday, June 22, 2021 12:16:19 PM Stefan Monnier wrote:
> > That's what I get for blindly copying and pasting the "directions" from
> > Github. I should've have just told Monnier that the whole shebang
> > can be installed locally, which renders inoperative his nitpick about
> > not having the Net when he needs to cheat the most (or most often).
> 
> The difference is that the manpages get installed automatically along
> with the software, so they're always there, always uptodate, without me
> having to think about it beforehand, without having to choose where to
> install them, nor remember where I installed them.
> 
> Don't get me wrong: all it means is that I think we want to keep *some*
> examples in the manpages.  IOW, I was just pointing out that the main
> benefit of manpages is that they're local and work in almost all
> situations.  They don't need to contain all the info you'll ever want to
> know, but I usually welcome a few examples in there ;-)

Eventually those extra examples for the man pages could become a local, 
automatically installed thing, similiar to the man pages -- there might be a 
command analogous to man, but instead exam[ple] (or similar, or wiki), invoked 
like:

exam ls
exam tar

etc.

Re: A feasible method to add examples to man pages?

[Stefan Monnier]

> That's what I get for blindly copying and pasting the "directions" from
> Github. I should've have just told Monnier that the whole shebang
> can be installed locally, which renders inoperative his nitpick about
> not having the Net when he needs to cheat the most (or most often).

The difference is that the manpages get installed automatically along
with the software, so they're always there, always uptodate, without me
having to think about it beforehand, without having to choose where to
install them, nor remember where I installed them.

Don't get me wrong: all it means is that I think we want to keep *some*
examples in the manpages.  IOW, I was just pointing out that the main
benefit of manpages is that they're local and work in almost all
situations.  They don't need to contain all the info you'll ever want to
know, but I usually welcome a few examples in there ;-)


Stefan

Re: A feasible method to add examples to man pages?

[Brian]

On Tue 22 Jun 2021 at 05:54:19 -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:

> On 06/22/2021 02:21 AM, Curt wrote:
> > On 2021-06-22, Greg Wooledge  wrote:
> > > On Mon, Jun 21, 2021 at 11:50:22PM +0100, Brian wrote:
> > > > On Mon 21 Jun 2021 at 15:25:53 -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > > On 06/21/2021 02:36 PM, Curt wrote:
> > > > > >curl https://cht.sh/:cht.sh > ~/bin/cht.sh
>  ^
>  |
>  +-- I don't understand that use of :

A search with "url with colon" is suggested. Conclusions are welcomed.
It hasn't anything to do with curl.

-- 
Brian.

Re: A feasible method to add examples to man pages?

[Curt]

On 2021-06-22, Richard Owlett  wrote:

> Unfortunately it outputs light gray text on white background which is 
> near impossible for me to read. I Can't figure out how to COERCE MATE 
> Terminal to render everything as black on white. That is a showstopper 
> for me.

Yeah, maybe you're trying to coerce the wrong thingamajig. 
 
 'curl cht.sh/ls?style=bw' 
 
works for me. Then again 'curl cht.sh/ls\?T' works equally well.

Other styles here:

 curl cht.sh/:styles

Re: A feasible method to add examples to man pages?

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Ma, 22 iun 21, 05:54:19, Richard Owlett wrote:
> 
> If ~/bin needs to be created, will logging out then in _guarantee_ it gets
> added to my path? That doesn't sound normal.

There is no guarantee :)

On buster /etc/skel/.profile includes the following snippets


# set PATH so it includes user's private bin if it exists
if [ -d "$HOME/bin" ] ; then
PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"
fi

# set PATH so it includes user's private bin if it exists
if [ -d "$HOME/.local/bin" ] ; then
PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"
fi
 
/etc/skel/.profile should be copied to the home directory of every new 
user (at least if created by the installer or with adduser).

Whether your shell and/or login method actually leads to sourcing 
~/.profile is a completely different question and depends on:

 1. Login method (Linux console, ssh, display manager, etc.)
 2. How you start your X session (if applicable and not taken care of by 
 a display manager)
 3. Terminal emulator (if in a graphical environment)
 4. Shell in use and its configuration

> Is there a Debian specific article on when to use which ...\bin directory in
> $PATH and when/how to permanently add an additional directory.

Not that I'm aware of. On the other hand the ~/.local/bin snippet was 
added recently (buster?) and makes sense for those who prefer the XDG 
directories over traditional dotfiles in $HOME.

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser


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Re: A feasible method to add examples to man pages?

[Richard Owlett]

On 06/22/2021 07:59 AM, Curt wrote:

On 2021-06-22, Richard Owlett  wrote:


I got multiple warning messages including a missing dependency and
warning that my Python was too old. I'm in process of installing
Debian 10.7 on another machine. I'll try again this afternoon or tomorrow.
Thanks.


Too old is surprising because it uses python 2 by default, but also will
work with python 3 after a tiny, documented modification of the script
("curl cheat.sh/:cht.sh | less" told me all about it). I also read that
1G of local disk space is required. Good luck.





The warning said that Python 3.5 was no longer being supported.
I fortunately have lots of disk room and it apparently runs correctly.

Unfortunately it outputs light gray text on white background which is 
near impossible for me to read. I Can't figure out how to COERCE MATE 
Terminal to render everything as black on white. That is a showstopper 
for me.

Re: A feasible method to add examples to man pages?

[Curt]

On 2021-06-22, Richard Owlett  wrote:
>
> I got multiple warning messages including a missing dependency and 
> warning that my Python was too old. I'm in process of installing
> Debian 10.7 on another machine. I'll try again this afternoon or tomorrow.
> Thanks.

Too old is surprising because it uses python 2 by default, but also will
work with python 3 after a tiny, documented modification of the script
("curl cheat.sh/:cht.sh | less" told me all about it). I also read that
1G of local disk space is required. Good luck.

Re: A feasible method to add examples to man pages?

[Richard Owlett]

On 06/22/2021 06:43 AM, Curt wrote:

On 2021-06-22, Richard Owlett  wrote:

On 06/22/2021 02:21 AM, Curt wrote:

On 2021-06-22, Greg Wooledge  wrote:

On Mon, Jun 21, 2021 at 11:50:22PM +0100, Brian wrote:

On Mon 21 Jun 2021 at 15:25:53 -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:


On 06/21/2021 02:36 PM, Curt wrote:

curl https://cht.sh/:cht.sh > ~/bin/cht.sh

   ^
   |
   +-- I don't understand that use of :



It's the syntax for "special pages."

Regular usage:

  curl cheat.sh/TOPIC   show cheat sheet on the TOPIC

Special pages:

 :help   help page
 :list   list all cheat sheets
 :post   how to post new cheat sheet
 :cht.sh shell client (cht.sh)

etc.

So curl cheat.sh/:help





I have Debian 9.13 installed
As root I did
   curl https://cht.sh/:cht.sh > /usr/bin/cht.sh
   chmod +x /usr/bin/cht.sh
Then as normal user did
   cht.sh --standalone-install

I got multiple warning messages including a missing dependency and 
warning that my Python was too old. I'm in process of installing

Debian 10.7 on another machine. I'll try again this afternoon or tomorrow.
Thanks.

Re: A feasible method to add examples to man pages?

[Curt]

On 2021-06-22, Richard Owlett  wrote:
> On 06/22/2021 02:21 AM, Curt wrote:
>> On 2021-06-22, Greg Wooledge  wrote:
>>> On Mon, Jun 21, 2021 at 11:50:22PM +0100, Brian wrote:
 On Mon 21 Jun 2021 at 15:25:53 -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:

> On 06/21/2021 02:36 PM, Curt wrote:
>>curl https://cht.sh/:cht.sh > ~/bin/cht.sh
>   ^
>   |
>   +-- I don't understand that use of :
>

It's the syntax for "special pages."

Regular usage:

 curl cheat.sh/TOPIC   show cheat sheet on the TOPIC

Special pages:

:help   help page
:list   list all cheat sheets
:post   how to post new cheat sheet
:cht.sh shell client (cht.sh)

etc. 

So curl cheat.sh/:help

Re: A feasible method to add examples to man pages?

[Richard Owlett]

On 06/22/2021 02:21 AM, Curt wrote:

On 2021-06-22, Greg Wooledge  wrote:

On Mon, Jun 21, 2021 at 11:50:22PM +0100, Brian wrote:

On Mon 21 Jun 2021 at 15:25:53 -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:


On 06/21/2021 02:36 PM, Curt wrote:

   curl https://cht.sh/:cht.sh > ~/bin/cht.sh

 ^
 |
 +-- I don't understand that use of :



   chmod +x ~/bin/cht.sh
   cht.sh --standalone-install


q.v. https://github.com/chubin/cheat.sh/blob/master/doc/standalone.md



I don't understand what those 3 lines are attempting to do.
What should I be reading?


curl(1)
bash(1) (Redirection)
chmod(1)
less ~/bin/cht.sh


Just for the record, there should be a mkdir -p ~/bin in there as
well.


That was part of what threw me. I didn't think to check if ~/bin existed.


 And one might need to log out and back in to get ~/bin into
one's PATH, depending on how one's dot files are set up.  (Manual
modification of PATH is also acceptable.)


If ~/bin needs to be created, will logging out then in _guarantee_ it 
gets added to my path? That doesn't sound normal.


Is there a Debian specific article on when to use which ...\bin 
directory in $PATH and when/how to permanently add an additional directory.






That's what I get for blindly copying and pasting the "directions" from
Github. I should've have just told Monnier that the whole shebang
can be installed locally, which renders inoperative his nitpick about
not having the Net when he needs to cheat the most (or most often).

Re: A feasible method to add examples to man pages?

[Curt]

On 2021-06-22, Greg Wooledge  wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 21, 2021 at 11:50:22PM +0100, Brian wrote:
>> On Mon 21 Jun 2021 at 15:25:53 -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:
>> 
>> > On 06/21/2021 02:36 PM, Curt wrote:
>> > >   curl https://cht.sh/:cht.sh > ~/bin/cht.sh
>> > >   chmod +x ~/bin/cht.sh
>> > >   cht.sh --standalone-install
>> > 
>> > I don't understand what those 3 lines are attempting to do.
>> > What should I be reading?
>> 
>> curl(1)
>> bash(1) (Redirection)
>> chmod(1)
>> less ~/bin/cht.sh
>
> Just for the record, there should be a mkdir -p ~/bin in there as
> well.  And one might need to log out and back in to get ~/bin into
> one's PATH, depending on how one's dot files are set up.  (Manual
> modification of PATH is also acceptable.)

That's what I get for blindly copying and pasting the "directions" from
Github. I should've have just told Monnier that the whole shebang
can be installed locally, which renders inoperative his nitpick about
not having the Net when he needs to cheat the most (or most often). 

Re: A feasible method to add examples to man pages?

[Greg Wooledge]

On Mon, Jun 21, 2021 at 11:50:22PM +0100, Brian wrote:
> On Mon 21 Jun 2021 at 15:25:53 -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:
> 
> > On 06/21/2021 02:36 PM, Curt wrote:
> > >   curl https://cht.sh/:cht.sh > ~/bin/cht.sh
> > >   chmod +x ~/bin/cht.sh
> > >   cht.sh --standalone-install
> > 
> > I don't understand what those 3 lines are attempting to do.
> > What should I be reading?
> 
> curl(1)
> bash(1) (Redirection)
> chmod(1)
> less ~/bin/cht.sh

Just for the record, there should be a mkdir -p ~/bin in there as
well.  And one might need to log out and back in to get ~/bin into
one's PATH, depending on how one's dot files are set up.  (Manual
modification of PATH is also acceptable.)

Re: A feasible method to add examples to man pages?

[Brian]

On Mon 21 Jun 2021 at 15:25:53 -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:

> On 06/21/2021 02:36 PM, Curt wrote:
> > On 2021-06-21, Stefan Monnier  wrote:
> > > > Many see the need for examples to be associated with man pages.
> > > [...]
> > > > Would it be proper/reasonable/practical/??? to add an entry of the form
> > > > https://cht.sh/XXX ?
> > > 
> > > I think it can make sense for manpages to include a link to some further
> > > doc in the form of a wiki or some other webpage, but I often enough find
> > > myself using `man` while trying to fix a system's network or X11/Wayland
> > > config, which makes it either impossible to access the Internet at that
> > > moment, or painful to browse a webpage.
> > 
> >   curl https://cht.sh/:cht.sh > ~/bin/cht.sh
> >   chmod +x ~/bin/cht.sh
> >   cht.sh --standalone-install
> > 
> 
> I don't understand what those 3 lines are attempting to do.
> What should I be reading?

curl(1)
bash(1) (Redirection)
chmod(1)
less ~/bin/cht.sh

-- 
Brian.

Re: A feasible method to add examples to man pages?

[Richard Owlett]

On 06/21/2021 02:36 PM, Curt wrote:

On 2021-06-21, Stefan Monnier  wrote:

Many see the need for examples to be associated with man pages.

[...]

Would it be proper/reasonable/practical/??? to add an entry of the form
https://cht.sh/XXX ?


I think it can make sense for manpages to include a link to some further
doc in the form of a wiki or some other webpage, but I often enough find
myself using `man` while trying to fix a system's network or X11/Wayland
config, which makes it either impossible to access the Internet at that
moment, or painful to browse a webpage.


  curl https://cht.sh/:cht.sh > ~/bin/cht.sh
  chmod +x ~/bin/cht.sh
  cht.sh --standalone-install



I don't understand what those 3 lines are attempting to do.
What should I be reading?
TIA

Re: A feasible method to add examples to man pages?

[Stefan Monnier]

> Many see the need for examples to be associated with man pages.
[...]
> Would it be proper/reasonable/practical/??? to add an entry of the form
> https://cht.sh/XXX ?

I think it can make sense for manpages to include a link to some further
doc in the form of a wiki or some other webpage, but I often enough find
myself using `man` while trying to fix a system's network or X11/Wayland
config, which makes it either impossible to access the Internet at that
moment, or painful to browse a webpage.


Stefan

Re: A feasible method to add examples to man pages?

[Curt]

On 2021-06-21, Stefan Monnier  wrote:
>> Many see the need for examples to be associated with man pages.
> [...]
>> Would it be proper/reasonable/practical/??? to add an entry of the form
>> https://cht.sh/XXX ?
>
> I think it can make sense for manpages to include a link to some further
> doc in the form of a wiki or some other webpage, but I often enough find
> myself using `man` while trying to fix a system's network or X11/Wayland
> config, which makes it either impossible to access the Internet at that
> moment, or painful to browse a webpage.

 curl https://cht.sh/:cht.sh > ~/bin/cht.sh
 chmod +x ~/bin/cht.sh
 cht.sh --standalone-install

>
> Stefan

Re: A feasible method to add examples to man pages?

[Marco Möller]

On 21.06.21 17:29, Richard Owlett wrote:

Many see the need for examples to be associated with man pages.
Sometime back a post mentioned a web page that could return examples for 
most(all??) Linux commands. I failed to bookmark it and have not 
rediscovered it since.


In another forum I was pointed to https://cht.sh/ .
Going to  https://cht.sh/XXX  will return a list of examples for XXX.

Along the right side of each page of /manpages.debian.org/... there is a 
list of links to various topics.


Would it be proper/reasonable/practical/??? to add an entry of the form 
https://cht.sh/XXX ?


Comments?
TIA




For displaying examples I am using the tldr command provided by package 
"tldr".

This client's web page is here:
https://github.com/psibi/tldr-hs#readme

The general tldr site is here:
https://tldr.sh/
There are also several web pages which search and display the 
information from the tldr examples collection, like this one:

https://tldr.ostera.io/

The project invites to participate by adding examples to its collection.
Following for years the upcoming discussions about the wish to enhance 
man pages by adding examples to it but confronting the situation that 
man pages are usually maintained by the package maintainers and not all 
of them are in favor of adding examples to the man pages, I think that 
the normal users are best served by supporting as a community an 
examples collection like the above mentioned tldr project.


Just my view as a user.
Marco.

Re: A feasible method to add examples to man pages?

[Richard Owlett]

On 06/21/2021 11:49 AM, Nate Bargmann wrote:

* On 2021 21 Jun 10:30 -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:

Many see the need for examples to be associated with man pages.


My name is among the authors of a few man pages found in the Debian
archive with regard to some software used primarily by radio amateurs.
Part of the issue is how many examples are enough and how many are too
much.  I landed at the point of providing enough for the curious to get
a sense of the options and how to provide them for programs.  Mostly
this was aimed at those more familiar with GUI programs not programs
that take command line options.

Manual pages that focus on library API calls have yet another challenge
for providing examples.  The Linux Man Pages Project seems to do a good
job in sections 2 (system calls) and 3 (C library calls) with concise
and useful examples and should probably serve as an example for other
authors to follow, IMO.


Sometime back a post mentioned a web page that could return examples for
most(all??) Linux commands. I failed to bookmark it and have not
rediscovered it since.


That may have been me.  Here is an example:

$ curl cheat.sh/curl

The cheat.sh site is not mine and I have no relation to it.
  

In another forum I was pointed to https://cht.sh/ .
Going to  https://cht.sh/XXX  will return a list of examples for XXX.


It is the same site only through the Web interface.


IIRC the page I saw was neither chat.sh nor cht.sh .
Right now both seem to have long response times.
I may have local hardware issues as some purely local operations have 
strange delays.





Along the right side of each page of /manpages.debian.org/... there is a
list of links to various topics.

Would it be proper/reasonable/practical/??? to add an entry of the form
https://cht.sh/XXX ?


That question would be better posed to the Debian Web site team than
here.


I asked here as the subject had been raised here and I wanted feed back 
from people had raised the issue.


As to discussing its implementation I was leaning to raising it on
debian-doc rather than debian-www.

Re: A feasible method to add examples to man pages?

[Nate Bargmann]

* On 2021 21 Jun 10:30 -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:
> Many see the need for examples to be associated with man pages.

My name is among the authors of a few man pages found in the Debian
archive with regard to some software used primarily by radio amateurs.
Part of the issue is how many examples are enough and how many are too
much.  I landed at the point of providing enough for the curious to get
a sense of the options and how to provide them for programs.  Mostly
this was aimed at those more familiar with GUI programs not programs
that take command line options.

Manual pages that focus on library API calls have yet another challenge
for providing examples.  The Linux Man Pages Project seems to do a good
job in sections 2 (system calls) and 3 (C library calls) with concise
and useful examples and should probably serve as an example for other
authors to follow, IMO.

> Sometime back a post mentioned a web page that could return examples for
> most(all??) Linux commands. I failed to bookmark it and have not
> rediscovered it since.

That may have been me.  Here is an example:

$ curl cheat.sh/curl

The cheat.sh site is not mine and I have no relation to it.
 
> In another forum I was pointed to https://cht.sh/ .
> Going to  https://cht.sh/XXX  will return a list of examples for XXX.

It is the same site only through the Web interface.

> Along the right side of each page of /manpages.debian.org/... there is a
> list of links to various topics.
> 
> Would it be proper/reasonable/practical/??? to add an entry of the form
> https://cht.sh/XXX ?

That question would be better posed to the Debian Web site team than
here.

- Nate

-- 

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all
possible worlds.  The pessimist fears this is true."

Web: https://www.n0nb.us
Projects: https://github.com/N0NB
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Re: A feasible method to add examples to man pages?

[Richard Owlett]

On 06/21/2021 10:29 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:

Many see the need for examples to be associated with man pages.
Sometime back a post mentioned a web page that could return examples for 
most(all??) Linux commands. I failed to bookmark it and have not 
rediscovered it since.


In another forum I was pointed to https://cht.sh/ .
Going to  https://cht.sh/XXX  will return a list of examples for XXX.

Along the right side of each page of /manpages.debian.org/... there is a 
list of links to various topics.


Would it be proper/reasonable/practical/??? to add an entry of the form 
https://cht.sh/XXX ?


Comments?
TIA



I just checked. That page does not explicitly address Greg Wooledge's 
comment[1] in another thread about handling one command with conflicting 
implementations. [e.g. "parallel"]



[1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2021/06/msg00496.html

A feasible method to add examples to man pages?

[Richard Owlett]

Many see the need for examples to be associated with man pages.
Sometime back a post mentioned a web page that could return examples for 
most(all??) Linux commands. I failed to bookmark it and have not 
rediscovered it since.


In another forum I was pointed to https://cht.sh/ .
Going to  https://cht.sh/XXX  will return a list of examples for XXX.

Along the right side of each page of /manpages.debian.org/... there is a 
list of links to various topics.


Would it be proper/reasonable/practical/??? to add an entry of the form 
https://cht.sh/XXX ?


Comments?
TIA

Re: A Proposal: Each of Online Debian Man pages could have a wiki (Main page / Talk Page, etc.) at its bottom, with only Example Code Lines ...

[Greg Wooledge]

On Mon, Jun 21, 2021 at 11:57:13AM +0530, Susmita/Rajib wrote:
> This post is to check if I am Blocked from the List.

Nobody ever suggested "blocking" you.  Who could even do that?  You'd
have to violate the list's policy in some egregious way, such as
sending commercial spam, to get the attention of the list administrators.

YOU, on the other hand, have accosted at least two people and asked them
to stop posting in threads that you had started.

At this point, if you expect anyone to engage with you, you need to stop
repeating yourself and spewing invective.  Instead, focus on the tasks
that people have asked you to do.

Show us an example of the work that you propose to do.  Create a page
on the Debian wiki containing additional EXAMPLES for some man page
that you consider to be in need of this enhancement.

This means you will need to work out how you plan to manage the page
namespace.  For example, are you going to differentiate between different
releases (buster/ls.1 bullseye/ls.1 and so on)?  How about alternative
implementations of the same command across different packages within
the same release?

For example, consider:

https://manpages.debian.org/buster/moreutils/parallel.1.en.html
https://manpages.debian.org/buster/parallel/parallel.1.en.html

Two implementations of the parallel(1) command, from two separate
sources.  Very different.  How do you plan to handle this situation?

Once you've written up new EXAMPLES for a few man pages to get the ball
rolling, it's possible that you'll find other people interested enough
to help you out.  But until then, I doubt anyone's going to step up and
do your work for you.

Re: A Proposal: Each of Online Debian Man pages could have a wiki (Main page / Talk Page, etc.) at its bottom, with only Example Code Lines ...

[Susmita/Rajib]

From: Andrei POPESCU 
To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
Date: Sun, 20 Jun 2021 09:52:50 +0300
Message-id: <[] 20210620065250.qdmrs6vgg3jnkx4g@acr13.nuvreauspam>
In-reply-to: 
References: 
<[] CAEG4cZXE5g_nxaEZLLF7ecHPf+gL81n=6rcazpy57ug3pa4...@mail.gmail.com>


[...]
> ... Agreed, except for the ... upstream maintainers
> ... have enough work actually developing the
>  software ... certain the Arch wiki ...
>  (praised here again and again) is written by the users.

>  The Arch wiki is GFDL 1.3 (or later) ... be copied
>  ...  (with appropriate attribution  ...
>  license requires ... with small tweaks ...
>  remove the Arch-specific parts.

One tiny alteration:   it was learnt from Mr. Hektor that the debian
Man Pages aren't wiki.

The file: "ls_proposal_man_debian.html", in the Drive folder:
https://bit.ly/Apt_readingManPages, contains the example on how I
would have wanted all the man pages to be, for Newcomers to learn
coding and systems handling with minimum / optimal help when in need.

Uploaded on my Drive, as well as attached in my earlier post, that
wasn't allowed.

This post is to check if I am Blocked from the List.

Best wishes.

P.S.:   Ref:   https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2021/06/msg00473.html

Re: A Proposal: Each of Online Debian Man pages could have a wiki (Main page / Talk Page, etc.) at its bottom, with only Example Code Lines ...

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Vi, 18 iun 21, 17:40:34, Michael Grant wrote:
> 
> It's a little odd for Debian to host a documentation wiki for upstream
> tools.  The package maintainers would need to look after the wiki page
> that corresponds to the package they are maintaining.  Not everyone is
> going to be happy with more work.  Even if they are not the ones
> writing it, they will need to be aware of it and if things change,
> tweak it.

Agreed.
 
> It feels like you should try to start a sort of "unixepedia" thing
> like wikipedia and then one by one try to get people to create pages
> for their tools.  Then, eventually people will put links into their
> man pages pointing at this global resource.  That's my best opinion
> after reading all your posts.

Agreed, except for the "get people to create pages for their tools". The 
upstream maintainers have enough work actually developing the software. 
I'm fairly certain the Arch wiki (praised here again and again) is 
written by the users.

The Arch wiki is GFDL 1.3 (or later), so the initial content could just 
be copied from there (with appropriate attribution and whatever else the 
license requires, of course), with small tweaks to remove the 
Arch-specific parts.

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser


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Re: A Proposal: Each of Online Debian Man pages could have a wiki (Main page / Talk Page, etc.) at its bottom, with only Example Code Lines ...

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Sb, 19 iun 21, 05:23:04, The Wanderer wrote:
> On 2021-06-19 at 02:51, Richard Hector wrote:
> 
> > On 19/06/21 2:28 pm, Susmita/Rajib wrote:
> > 
> >> Aren't the ML members aware that Debian already has a Man Wiki
> >> pages repository? Debian Man Wiki Pages are available at: 
> >> https://manpages.debian.org/
> > 
> > I'm pretty sure that's not a wiki.
> > 
> > It looks like a set of automatically generated static pages.
> 
> In particular, I suspect that it is automatically generated from the
> exact same data set as the man pages themselves (if not *from* the man
> pages themselves), and therefore will by definition have the exact same
> content as those man pages.

This is correct as far as I know, by design, and it's been very useful 
to be able to the manpage from other online documentation (the wiki, 
Release Notes, etc.).

> Tweaks and adjustments, beyond the purely
> mechanical sort involved in converting the formatting to HTML etc., are
> almost certainly either A: not possible or B: excluded from the scope.

It surely would be possible to somehow attach a wiki-like editable part 
at the bottom. Whether that actually makes sense has already been 
addressed.

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser


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Re: A Proposal: Each of Online Debian Man pages could have a wiki (Main page / Talk Page, etc.) at its bottom, with only Example Code Lines ...

[Susmita/Rajib]

The file: "ls_proposal_man_debian.html", in the Drive folder:
https://bit.ly/Apt_readingManPages, contains the example on how I
would have wanted all the man pages to be, for Newcomers to learn
coding and systems handling with minimum / optimal help when in need.

I desire that GNU FSF and Debian, as a part of Free and Open Source
Software (when I joined in 2008), become beautiful, enriching and
fulfilling to use.

I find so much possibilities by the Free and Open Source Software by
the Idea of GNU  being Wasted!

It appears to me that some groups have grabbed a HUGE control over
free interactions and ideas getting generated and exchanged.

Conspiracy Theory:

Strategy #1: As a jealous individual, trying to sell my broken ware, I
don't need to do anything other than find out like-minded
individuals/groups and hijack a thread with promise and continue
posting mindless questions/comments, expecting that any ideator,
trying to share meaningful ideas, shall become engaged with me,
eventually get irritated, and ultimately leave.

Strategy #2: I get paid by the Proprietary Universe just to disrupt
ideas getting generated collectively, shared FREELY and getting
improved, by strategy #1.
--

Wind flows, clouds form, rain falls, day and night cycles. Universe
carries on, with or without me.

I am NOT the Controller of the Universe.

I have been given Human Rights.

As an extension, the Freedom to choose my friends circle. To decide
whom to engage with.

I also have the Freedom to Express to someone that I wouldn't like to
engage with that one.

The problem in a Mailing List is that anyone can post anything and
quickly get things CLUTTERED.

I am willing to be BARRED from posting on to a group that I have joined.

 But I shall reserve my rights to say to a person that I consider him my friend.

I also shall reserve my rights to say to a person that I wouldn't like
to engage with him.

So ideally, I would have liked to have such rights here too.

I shall still be successful separating the Chaff from the Grain.

Best.

Re: A Proposal: Each of Online Debian Man pages could have a wiki (Main page / Talk Page, etc.) at its bottom, with only Example Code Lines ...

[Dan Ritter]

Greg Wooledge wrote: 
> Now, I will also note that this poster has sent me private email telling
> me in flowery language to shut up and stay out of their threads.
> Screw you.  I will respond when I feel there's a reason to respond.
> I also mention this primarily for informational purposes, to let others
> on the list know what kind of personality they're dealing with.

Same here, which is why I dropped them in my spam filter.
Nevertheless, it's just them; I'm not locking myself out of
whatever threads they happen to post in.

-dsr-

Re: A Proposal: Each of Online Debian Man pages could have a wiki (Main page / Talk Page, etc.) at its bottom, with only Example Code Lines ...

[Curt]

On 2021-06-19, Greg Wooledge  wrote:
>
> Now, I will also note that this poster has sent me private email telling
> me in flowery language to shut up and stay out of their threads.
> Screw you.  I will respond when I feel there's a reason to respond.
> I also mention this primarily for informational purposes, to let others
> on the list know what kind of personality they're dealing with.
>

Thanks illustrious team leader, but I long ago concluded this guy is a
nutball (to put it in a nutshell, as it were, and without the delicate
touch for which I am renown). 

Re: A Proposal: Each of Online Debian Man pages could have a wiki (Main page / Talk Page, etc.) at its bottom, with only Example Code Lines ...

[Greg Wooledge]

On Sat, Jun 19, 2021 at 07:58:58AM +0530, Susmita/Rajib wrote:
> The Drive Folder for a sample Man file and an attempt at pictorial
> analysis along with visual explanations of a sample command:
> https://bit.ly/Apt_readingManPages

OK, I finally took the bait and clicked on this link.  For informational
purposes, in case anyone else was considering it: it redirects to a
drive.google.com page, which contains 5 files.  Four of them are PNG
images, and one of them is ".txt" but it contains subscripted letters.

(This also explains some confusion I had with the author's previous
email in which they referred to letters "A B C D E, where each of h, k, m,
n and p is..." with no antecedent for the h, k, m, n or p.  It turns out
the A B C D E were actually supposed to be Ah and so on,
but the subscripts were lost in conversion somewhere along the line.)

None of the images make any sense to me, but perhaps they will make sense
to someone else.  Two of them are renderings of web pages, but they're
so tall that they are displayed with extreme resizing in my browser,
and since those two images are composed mostly of words on a white
background, the reduction in the size of the image of the words makes
them unreadable to me.

Actual text (or HTML) would be far superior to an image of a rendered
web page.

Now, I will also note that this poster has sent me private email telling
me in flowery language to shut up and stay out of their threads.
Screw you.  I will respond when I feel there's a reason to respond.
I also mention this primarily for informational purposes, to let others
on the list know what kind of personality they're dealing with.

I have yet to see an actual example of the work you're proposing to do.
Show us one man page that you feel is lacking in its EXAMPLES section,
and then show us the wiki page (on https://wiki.debian.org / -- I mean
actually *create* one and then post its URL on the mailing list) with
your contribution that you believe would be worth referencing in the
man page.

Re: A Proposal: Each of Online Debian Man pages could have a wiki (Main page / Talk Page, etc.) at its bottom, with only Example Code Lines ...

[The Wanderer]

On 2021-06-19 at 02:51, Richard Hector wrote:

> On 19/06/21 2:28 pm, Susmita/Rajib wrote:
> 
>> Aren't the ML members aware that Debian already has a Man Wiki
>> pages repository? Debian Man Wiki Pages are available at: 
>> https://manpages.debian.org/
> 
> I'm pretty sure that's not a wiki.
> 
> It looks like a set of automatically generated static pages.

In particular, I suspect that it is automatically generated from the
exact same data set as the man pages themselves (if not *from* the man
pages themselves), and therefore will by definition have the exact same
content as those man pages. Tweaks and adjustments, beyond the purely
mechanical sort involved in converting the formatting to HTML etc., are
almost certainly either A: not possible or B: excluded from the scope.

-- 
   The Wanderer

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw



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Re: A Proposal: Each of Online Debian Man pages could have a wiki (Main page / Talk Page, etc.) at its bottom, with only Example Code Lines ...

[Susmita/Rajib]

To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
From: Richard Hector 
Date: Sat, 19 Jun 2021 18:51:04 +1200
[...]
> I'm pretty sure that's not a wiki.
> It looks like a set of automatically generated static pages.
> Richard

Okay, thank you Mr. Hector, for correcting my notion.

The proposal remains the same with this correction.

Best

Re: A Proposal: Each of Online Debian Man pages could have a wiki (Main page / Talk Page, etc.) at its bottom, with only Example Code Lines ...

[Richard Hector]

On 19/06/21 2:28 pm, Susmita/Rajib wrote:

Aren't the ML members aware that Debian already has a Man Wiki pages
repository? Debian Man Wiki Pages are available at:
https://manpages.debian.org/


I'm pretty sure that's not a wiki.

It looks like a set of automatically generated static pages.

Richard

Re: A Proposal: Each of Online Debian Man pages could have a wiki (Main page / Talk Page, etc.) at its bottom, with only Example Code Lines ...

[Susmita/Rajib]

On 19/06/2021, Michael Grant  wrote:
[...]
Thank you, Mr. Grant, for posting to my thread. The link to address
your queries may please be referred to:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2021/06/msg00454.html,

The Drive Folder for a sample Man file and an attempt at pictorial
analysis along with visual explanations of a sample command:
https://bit.ly/Apt_readingManPages

I shall  leapfrog.

Mr. Grant says:
> It's a little odd for Debian to host a documentation wiki for upstream
> [...]
> writing it, they will need to be aware of it and if things change,
> tweak it.

Aren't the ML members aware that Debian already has a Man Wiki pages
repository? Debian Man Wiki Pages are available at:
https://manpages.debian.org/

> Wikis tend to be GUI based and man pages are text files used generally
> at the command propt ...

Debian Wikis _are_ GUI.

> I'm all for better documentation but I don't see how Debian can be the
> documentation repository for all tools that just happen to be Debian
> packages.

Okay. This point could be discussed on a separate thread.

I have a few questions:
(1)   Is uploading the Debian Man Wiki Pages at:
https://manpages.debian.org/ automated?

(2)   Aren't the posters and  senior members of the ML aware that
Debian Man Wiki pages already exist?

(3)   Don't all the programmers spend at least some time on the internet?

(4)   Don't all the programmers spend at least some time on the Debian
MLs or forums?

90% of the problem appears to have been solved here itself.

Each programmer must be using some form of codes, and they are
permanently etched on to their memory.

(5)   Can't one line of code example per day to a text file for One familiar
Command each in the same Debian Wiki repository be possible?

Now, if the offline Man Pages installed on a Debian System is uploaded
on to the Debian Wiki by some automation, then patching M (man file) +
C (Example code lines) to be a better M (Man page) shouldn't be much of an
effort.
Example:  "AptDebianManpages.png" and "Modified_AptDebianManpages.png"
at https://bit.ly/Apt_readingManPages

If the above isn't automated, then patching M(man file) + C (Example
code lines) to be a better M (Man page) would be a tiny effort per
person and one Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V, and  the effort is a tiny fraction
of preparing the man pages.

[...]
>  ...  
>   ... Not everyone is
> going to be happy with more work.  Even if they are not the ones
> writing it, they will need to be aware of it and if things change,
> tweak it. [...]

Work averse? After so much of reading, writing codes? For one line of
familiar code line per day for at most 10-12 days?

Programmers having their creations on GitHub and willing to have them
included in Debian Repo could be advised to write illustrative example
code lines on the program's Man pages.

[...]
> It feels like you should try to start a sort of "unixepedia" thing
> like wikipedia and then one by one try to get people to create pages
> for their tools.  Then, eventually people will put links into their
> man pages pointing at this global resource.  That's my best opinion
> after reading all your posts.
[...]

I am not thinking along these lines presently.

Best.
Rajib

Re: A Proposal: Each of Online Debian Man pages could have a wiki (Main page / Talk Page, etc.) at its bottom, with only Example Code Lines ...

[Michael Grant]

On Fri, Jun 18, 2021 at 09:20:56PM +0530, Susmita/Rajib wrote:
> The subject line is  being amended to add the word "Online " before
> "... Debian Man pages ..." for the thread at:
> https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2021/06/msg00432.html, continued
> till https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2021/06/msg00438.html, to
> further clarify confusion of rhkramer , who privately
> communicated, and for  Jonathan Dowland , who showed
> interest on the topic. I also hope that with this Email I shall also
> be able to address the confusions inadvertently caused to Mr. David
> Wright ,.
> 
> The Drive Folder for a sample Man file and an attempt at pictorial
> analysis of a sample command:
> https://bit.ly/Apt_readingManPages
> 
> An analysis of the Drive File : DebianApt-get.txt
> 
> https://manpages.debian.org/buster/apt/apt-get.8.en.html
> 
> apt-get [-asqdyfmubV] [-o=config_string] [-c=config_file] [-t=target_release]
> 
> Please look at the parts:
> Let
> A = apt-get
> B = [-asqdyfmubV]
> C = [-o=config_string]
> D = [-c=config_file]
> E = [-t=target_release]
> 
> An apt-get command is a Text String formed by one particular choice of
> all the options available, of each of A, B, C, D and E, with a space
> in between.
> 
> Say, in abstraction, a Text-String formed by, say:
> Aₕ Bₖ Cₘ Dₙ Eₚ,  where each of h,k,m,n and p is any one of all the
> options available for each of them individually.
> 
> For example, one code-line could be A₁ B₂ C₅ D₆ E₁₂, as an illustration.
> 
> I was just trying to say this illustratively for writers (without a
> general mathematical background) who would help edit the code lines,
> by the svg picture.
> 
> No authorisation required. Please have all the files downloaded to
> your local HDD and then use EOG (or any other image viewer you are
> comfortable with) for viewing the images, and plain text reader like
> leafpad to read the text files.
> 
> Ideally, if your browser if properly set up, you need not download.
> You could view/read files from your browser-tab itself.
> 
> I use Mozilla Firefox. But for any Mozilla forked web-browser like
> Google Chrome or Chromium, operations are similar.
> 
> A GUI user would usually click the link on the Email (Gmail) Tab. If
> settings are standard on the web-browser, the link shall open on a
> separate Tab.
> 
> My proposal is, by a specific example, for the Debian Apt Man Online Page,
> Let M be The Debian Apt Man Online Webpage.
> i.e., M = https://manpages.debian.org/buster/apt/apt.8.en.html
> 
> Then my proposal:
> 
> M = M + Examples of all the representative combinations of code-lines
> related to Command, at the bottom, like my file (i have, for
> illustration, presented pictorially the scheme, whereas what's
> required are all example/representative code lines, into rows of code
> lines, with, if required, one line/phrase explanations)
> 
> Pictorially illustrated on the Drive folder.
> 
> Best,
> Rajib
> 
> 

I honestly couldn't decode this message but I have been following this
thread.  If I understand correctly what I think Rajib wants is:

1) when a package is added to debian's repo, some automation which
looks at the package, determines if it has man pages, and for each of
those man pages, create a corresponding wiki page in a debian owned
man page wiki.

2) somehow automatically patch the man page to include a link to said
wiki page.  (note, this will be hard).

Maybe some automation could be created to create these wiki pages.
But I see problems.

Packages change, become obsolete, sometimes get renamed.  Even
command names change over time.

It's a little odd for Debian to host a documentation wiki for upstream
tools.  The package maintainers would need to look after the wiki page
that corresponds to the package they are maintaining.  Not everyone is
going to be happy with more work.  Even if they are not the ones
writing it, they will need to be aware of it and if things change,
tweak it.

It seems like Rajib is looking for something at a higher level, not at
the level of Debian, but at the level of Unix/Linux itself, as in, how
to document things you've worked on in a standard way in a globally
editable/extendable forum.

Wikis tend to be GUI based and man pages are text files used generally
at the command propt.  The closest text based thing I can think of is
the gnu info system which is/was meant for this sort of thing but is
not very widely used.  It predates markdown and wikis by many years.

I'm all for better documentation but I don't see how Debian can be the
documentation repository for all tools that just happen to be Debian
packages.

It feels like you should try to start a sort of "unixepedia" thing
like wikipedia and then one by one try to get people to create pages
for their tools.  Then, eventually people will put links into their
man pages pointing at this global resource.  That's my best opinion
after reading all your posts.

Michael Grant


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Re: A Proposal: Each of Online Debian Man pages could have a wiki (Main page / Talk Page, etc.) at its bottom, with only Example Code Lines ...

[Susmita/Rajib]

The subject line is  being amended to add the word "Online " before
"... Debian Man pages ..." for the thread at:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2021/06/msg00432.html, continued
till https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2021/06/msg00438.html, to
further clarify confusion of rhkramer , who privately
communicated, and for  Jonathan Dowland , who showed
interest on the topic. I also hope that with this Email I shall also
be able to address the confusions inadvertently caused to Mr. David
Wright ,.

The Drive Folder for a sample Man file and an attempt at pictorial
analysis of a sample command:
https://bit.ly/Apt_readingManPages

An analysis of the Drive File : DebianApt-get.txt

https://manpages.debian.org/buster/apt/apt-get.8.en.html

apt-get [-asqdyfmubV] [-o=config_string] [-c=config_file] [-t=target_release]

Please look at the parts:
Let
A = apt-get
B = [-asqdyfmubV]
C = [-o=config_string]
D = [-c=config_file]
E = [-t=target_release]

An apt-get command is a Text String formed by one particular choice of
all the options available, of each of A, B, C, D and E, with a space
in between.

Say, in abstraction, a Text-String formed by, say:
Aₕ Bₖ Cₘ Dₙ Eₚ,  where each of h,k,m,n and p is any one of all the
options available for each of them individually.

For example, one code-line could be A₁ B₂ C₅ D₆ E₁₂, as an illustration.

I was just trying to say this illustratively for writers (without a
general mathematical background) who would help edit the code lines,
by the svg picture.

No authorisation required. Please have all the files downloaded to
your local HDD and then use EOG (or any other image viewer you are
comfortable with) for viewing the images, and plain text reader like
leafpad to read the text files.

Ideally, if your browser if properly set up, you need not download.
You could view/read files from your browser-tab itself.

I use Mozilla Firefox. But for any Mozilla forked web-browser like
Google Chrome or Chromium, operations are similar.

A GUI user would usually click the link on the Email (Gmail) Tab. If
settings are standard on the web-browser, the link shall open on a
separate Tab.

My proposal is, by a specific example, for the Debian Apt Man Online Page,
Let M be The Debian Apt Man Online Webpage.
i.e., M = https://manpages.debian.org/buster/apt/apt.8.en.html

Then my proposal:

M = M + Examples of all the representative combinations of code-lines
related to Command, at the bottom, like my file (i have, for
illustration, presented pictorially the scheme, whereas what's
required are all example/representative code lines, into rows of code
lines, with, if required, one line/phrase explanations)

Pictorially illustrated on the Drive folder.

Best,
Rajib

Re: A Proposal: Each of Debian Man pages could have a wiki (Main page / Talk Page, etc.) at its bottom, with only Example Code Lines ...

[David Wright]

On Thu 17 Jun 2021 at 18:01:55 (+0530), Susmita/Rajib wrote:
> On Thu, 17 Jun 2021 10:37:43 +0100, Jonathan Dowland

> > However, as with all things in Debian, things are best achieved by doing
> > them yourself; or at least, beginning to, so that there's a concrete
> > example to explore.
> >
> > In this case, there are at least two hurdles to overcome, neither of
> > which should be insurmountable:
> >
> > 1) The source ... upstream packages
> >themselves. Therefore, ... package maintainers will need to carry
> >patches for every man page...
> >
> > 2) The Debian Wiki has an unclear copyright ... Wiki content cannot be 
> > included...
> >
> > A good place to start would be finding a single package/program/manpage
> > that would benefit from linking out to a wiki page, and doing so, in
> > order to demonstrate the concept clearly.
> [...]
> 
> So in brief, fully self-illustrative:
> https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2021/03/msg01358.html
> 
> In the end, the illustrative, but incomplete Mind Map:
> bit.ly/Apt_readingManPages

I looked back at that post, which I have already replied to
in general terms (msg01366.html); this reply is more specific
on just one point.

You used as an example a comparison between   man ls
and several texts:

https://medium.com/@isaac_70614/the-ls-command-and-wildcard-7fff5a4f7f24
https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/learning-the-unix/1565923901/ch04s03.html
https://www.tecmint.com/use-wildcards-to-match-filenames-in-linux/
https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/grep-regular-expressions/

Leaving aside the fourth¹ of these, you seem to have missed the point
that the texts are *teaching* wildcards, and the reason that all
three texts chose to use the ls command to illustrate the results is
that ls conveniently displays the matching filenames on the console.

The expansion of the wildcards is being done by the shell, not ls.
The shell would perform the same expansion for whatever command
were used, but most commands would operate on those files *without*
printing their names, which would not be very useful for teaching.

So comparing the texts with   man ls   is meaningless: the latter
deals with the options and exit codes provided by ls.

Where you should look for a meaningful comparison is   man bash, and
in particular, the section EXPANSION, subsection Pathname Expansion,
subsubsection Pattern Matching. In making your comparison, bear in
mind that the texts are didactic, whereas   man bash   is only an
aide-memoire. For example, someone might use ls for years and not
remember how to sort the output by extension (-X), but you wouldn't
read through a book just for that. You'd consult the man page.

¹ The fourth text looks as though the reference just slipped in
  accidentally from your next example. The patterns used by grep
  are very different.

Cheers,
David.

Re: A Proposal: Each of Debian Man pages could have a wiki (Main page / Talk Page, etc.) at its bottom, with only Example Code Lines ...

[Susmita/Rajib]

On Thu, 17 Jun 2021 10:37:43 +0100, Jonathan Dowland
 wrote:
[...]
> Message-id: <[] 20210617093743.v3t2nyw2si2luoif@coil>
> In-reply-to: <[]
> caeg4czw1-rwjvf2hmacwigqu4juqfm66r5xwkkz7ftmrfzh...@mail.gmail.com>
> References: <[]
> caeg4czw1-rwjvf2hmacwigqu4juqfm66r5xwkkz7ftmrfzh...@mail.gmail.com>
>
[...]
Ref. https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2021/06/msg00435.html
[...]
> However, as with all things in Debian, things are best achieved by doing
> them yourself; or at least, beginning to, so that there's a concrete
> example to explore.
>
> In this case, there are at least two hurdles to overcome, neither of
> which should be insurmountable:
>
> 1) The source ... upstream packages
>themselves. Therefore, ... package maintainers will need to carry
>patches for every man page...
>
> 2) The Debian Wiki has an unclear copyright ... Wiki content cannot be 
> included...
>
> A good place to start would be finding a single package/program/manpage
> that would benefit from linking out to a wiki page, and doing so, in
> order to demonstrate the concept clearly.
[...]


Thank you for posting to this thread, Mr. Dowland. As a member of the
team Debian, you must really be hard-pressed for time.

So in brief, fully self-illustrative:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2021/03/msg01358.html

In the end, the illustrative, but incomplete Mind Map:
bit.ly/Apt_readingManPages

Best,
Rajib
Etc.

Re: A Proposal: Each of Debian Man pages could have a wiki (Main page / Talk Page, etc.) at its bottom, with only Example Code Lines ...

[Jonathan Dowland]

On Thu, Jun 17, 2021 at 11:37:07AM +0530, Susmita/Rajib wrote:

... for most complex combinations of codes, with a single line or two of
explanations, if at all necessary.


I think there's a lot of potential for tying together documentation
shipped inside Debian (including manpages) better with documentation
outside (including the wiki).

However, as with all things in Debian, things are best achieved by doing
them yourself; or at least, beginning to, so that there's a concrete
example to explore.

In this case, there are at least two hurdles to overcome, neither of
which should be insurmountable:

1) The source of most man pages in Debian is the upstream packages
   themselves. Therefore, to include a Debian-specific addition in
   every manpage, Debian package maintainers will need to carry
   patches for every man page. For some packages, especially those
   which don't already apply any patches, this is some overhead that
   a busy maintainer may not wish for.

2) The Debian Wiki has an unclear copyright situation. The content of
   wiki pages is not necessarily compatible with the Debian Free
   Software Guidelines (DFSG), and so Wiki content cannot be included
   in Debian packages without further checks. (This is something I've
   been trying to resolve for literally a decade or more, on and off.
   Mostly off.)

A good place to start would be finding a single package/program/manpage
that would benefit from linking out to a wiki page, and doing so, in
order to demonstrate the concept clearly.


--
Please do not CC me for listmail.

  Jonathan Dowland
✎j...@debian.org
   https://jmtd.net

A Proposal: Each of Debian Man pages could have a wiki (Main page / Talk Page, etc.) at its bottom, with only Example Code Lines ...

[Susmita/Rajib]

 ... for most complex combinations of codes, with a single line or two of
explanations, if at all necessary.

A talk page requesting explanations, or for recording innovative code lines.

Infrastructure and resource already exist. Just minor alterations
required. Community work could help.

A follow up on the earlier Thread:
Whether Man pages could visually be structured in an abstract form to
be understood easier
https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2021/04/msg00552.html

The illustrative, but incomplete Mind Map:
bit.ly/Apt_readingManPages

Debian Online Man Pages available at: https://manpages.debian.org/

Best
Rajib
Etc.

Re: examples for man pages

[Curt]

On 2021-05-31, Dan Ritter  wrote:
>> > 
>> > '\?T' for text only, no ANSI sequences
>> > 
>> >   curl cht.sh/cp\?T
>> > 
>> > curl cheat.sh/:help
>> 
>> Thank you. That addresses the immediate *SYMPTOM*.
>> 
>> I'll repeat my statement from my original post:
>> > I'll have to reconfigure something on my system.
>> 
>> I require my terminal emulator [MATE terminal] to NOT display colors.
>> Its "Help" claims supports for VT102 emulation, BUT gives no information on
>> how to obtain it.
>> It may be a half-century since I worked at DEC, but IIRC all VT100 series
>> were physically B only.
>> 
>
> Then solve that in the terminal emulator.
>
> MATE terminal has "profiles". Edit your default profile. Make
> all the colors either black or white. Save.

You can't win with this guy. It's turtles all the way down.

:-)

> -dsr-

Re: examples for man pages

[Dan Ritter]

Richard Owlett wrote: 
> On 05/30/2021 03:02 PM, Curt wrote:
> > On 2021-05-29, Richard Owlett  wrote:
> > > 
> > > I'll have to reconfigure something on my system. Executing  'curl
> > > cheat.sh/cp' resulted in light grey text on white background ;/
> > > 
> > 
> > '\?T' for text only, no ANSI sequences
> > 
> >   curl cht.sh/cp\?T
> > 
> > curl cheat.sh/:help
> > 
> 
> Thank you. That addresses the immediate *SYMPTOM*.
> 
> I'll repeat my statement from my original post:
> > I'll have to reconfigure something on my system.
> 
> I require my terminal emulator [MATE terminal] to NOT display colors.
> Its "Help" claims supports for VT102 emulation, BUT gives no information on
> how to obtain it.
> It may be a half-century since I worked at DEC, but IIRC all VT100 series
> were physically B only.
> 

Then solve that in the terminal emulator.

MATE terminal has "profiles". Edit your default profile. Make
all the colors either black or white. Save.

-dsr-

Re: examples for man pages

[Richard Owlett]

On 05/30/2021 03:02 PM, Curt wrote:

On 2021-05-29, Richard Owlett  wrote:


I'll have to reconfigure something on my system. Executing  'curl
cheat.sh/cp' resulted in light grey text on white background ;/



'\?T' for text only, no ANSI sequences

  curl cht.sh/cp\?T

curl cheat.sh/:help



Thank you. That addresses the immediate *SYMPTOM*.

I'll repeat my statement from my original post:

I'll have to reconfigure something on my system.


I require my terminal emulator [MATE terminal] to NOT display colors.
Its "Help" claims supports for VT102 emulation, BUT gives no information 
on how to obtain it.
It may be a half-century since I worked at DEC, but IIRC all VT100 
series were physically B only.

Re: examples for man pages

[Curt]

On 2021-05-29, Richard Owlett  wrote:
>
> I'll have to reconfigure something on my system. Executing  'curl 
> cheat.sh/cp' resulted in light grey text on white background ;/
>

'\?T' for text only, no ANSI sequences 

 curl cht.sh/cp\?T

curl cheat.sh/:help

Re: examples for man pages

[Richard Owlett]

On 05/29/2021 03:20 PM, Jeremy Nicoll wrote:

On Sat, 29 May 2021, at 21:03, Richard Owlett wrote:


The man page is, putting *mildly*, overwhelming. Is there a recommended
introduction to curl.


curl is a big subject.  While it's very useful to people who write scripts etc,
on many platforms, the whole manual is aimed at programmers using it.
Inevitably a lot of the information is quite detailed.

If you're looking to learn more about one subject, getting distracted into
learning about curl is possibly not a great idea!

For a quick summary of some basic uses of curl, see

   https://curl.se/docs/manual.html

For an longer, but much more educational read, try

   https://everything.curl.dev/

which was written by curl's author.



Both suffer from the same "feature" as the man page - abundance of fine 
detail. The second appears to to have a very good index so that if you 
need a particular detail, it should be quickly found.


After browsing both I did:
  https://html.duckduckgo.com/html?q=what%20is%20linux%20curl

The first hits each gave few examples, but they hit a wide range of 
topics. Thus answering an underlying question, "Why would I want to use 
curl?"

Re: examples for man pages

[Nate Bargmann]

* On 2021 29 May 15:04 -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:
> On 05/29/2021 12:55 PM, Nate Bargmann wrote:
> > This may not be exactly what you're thinking of, but I saw this
> > referenced on Reddit recently:
> > 
> > curl cheat.sh/
> > 
> > I just did it for 'curl cheat.sh/cp' which gives some examples including
> > from tldr.
> > 
> > - Nate
> > 
> 
> I'll have to reconfigure something on my system. Executing  'curl
> cheat.sh/cp' resulted in light grey text on white background ;/

Might have to take that up with the author of cheat.sh.  I use Linux
console colors in my terminals so gray text on a nearly black background
thus everything looks fine "here".

> The man page is, putting *mildly*, overwhelming. Is there a recommended
> introduction to curl.

Well, 'curl cheat.sh/curl' gives me several screens full of seemingly
useful examples.  I've not used curl much either, it's mostly installed
for some other tool on my system, as I recall.  I do use wget on
occasion.

- Nate

-- 

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all
possible worlds.  The pessimist fears this is true."

Web: https://www.n0nb.us
Projects: https://github.com/N0NB
GPG fingerprint: 82D6 4F6B 0E67 CD41 F689 BBA6 FB2C 5130 D55A 8819



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Re: examples for man pages

[Jeremy Nicoll]

On Sat, 29 May 2021, at 21:03, Richard Owlett wrote:

> The man page is, putting *mildly*, overwhelming. Is there a recommended 
> introduction to curl.

curl is a big subject.  While it's very useful to people who write scripts etc,
on many platforms, the whole manual is aimed at programmers using it.
Inevitably a lot of the information is quite detailed.   

If you're looking to learn more about one subject, getting distracted into 
learning about curl is possibly not a great idea!

For a quick summary of some basic uses of curl, see

  https://curl.se/docs/manual.html

For an longer, but much more educational read, try

  https://everything.curl.dev/

which was written by curl's author.

-- 
Jeremy Nicoll - my opinions are my own.

Re: examples for man pages

[Richard Owlett]

On 05/29/2021 12:55 PM, Nate Bargmann wrote:

This may not be exactly what you're thinking of, but I saw this
referenced on Reddit recently:

curl cheat.sh/

I just did it for 'curl cheat.sh/cp' which gives some examples including
from tldr.

- Nate



I'll have to reconfigure something on my system. Executing  'curl 
cheat.sh/cp' resulted in light grey text on white background ;/


However, on [ https://github.com/chubin/cheat.sh ] I saw:

If you don't know the name of the command you need, you can search for it
using the ~KEYWORD notation. For example, to see how you can make snapshots
of a filesystem/volume/something else ...


That has interesting possibilities for addressing a different set of 
problems. Exploring that site and the curl command [which I've never 
used] should keep me indoors for a chilly &/or wet coming week.


The man page is, putting *mildly*, overwhelming. Is there a recommended 
introduction to curl.

Re: examples for man pages

[Richard Owlett]

On 05/29/2021 11:47 AM, Marco Möller wrote:

On 29.05.21 15:41, Richard Owlett wrote:
A couple of months ago there was a discussion of practical problems 
with adding examples to all man pages.


Someone pointed to a website of examples indexed by man page name. 
Unfortunately I didn't bookmark it and my attempts to do a web search 
failed.


Does anyone recall the URL?
TIA




I didn't follow that discussion, but I know this:
https://github.com/tldr-pages/tldr/tree/master
At the bottom of that page you will find in category "Web clients" a 
list of Websites of interest, which can show you the tldr ouptut.

https://tldr.dendron.so/
At the command prompt, without having to use a browser, I much liked the 
node.js based client with its colorful (helpful) output:

https://github.com/tldr-pages/tldr-node-client
Simply because of the ease of installation with "apt install tldr" I am 
also happy with the tldr client in the Debian repository.
I am not sure if this is what you have been asking for. However, I hope 
that also this information could be useful for you.

Good Luck!
Marco.


I came across that in my current search. It attacks the underlying with 
a different set of goals/constraints.


I'm specifically looking for a HTML web page as I have my browser 
configured to address some visual problems.

Re: examples for man pages

[Richard Owlett]

On 05/29/2021 10:57 AM, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:

On Sat, May 29, 2021 at 08:41:02AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:

A couple of months ago there was a discussion of practical problems with
adding examples to all man pages.

Someone pointed to a website of examples indexed by man page name.
Unfortunately I didn't bookmark it and my attempts to do a web search
failed.

Does anyone recall the URL?
TIA



Richard,

The thread appears to start here:

https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2021/03/msg01358.html

You can, if you wish, search the archives of this list quite well at
https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/ at any point.

All the very best, as ever,

Andy C.





Not in that thread. I have a local copy of that thread.
The web page I'm looking for was mentioned in more narrowly focused 
thread in the same time frame.

Re: examples for man pages

[Nate Bargmann]

This may not be exactly what you're thinking of, but I saw this
referenced on Reddit recently:

curl cheat.sh/

I just did it for 'curl cheat.sh/cp' which gives some examples including
from tldr.

- Nate

-- 

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all
possible worlds.  The pessimist fears this is true."

Web: https://www.n0nb.us
Projects: https://github.com/N0NB
GPG fingerprint: 82D6 4F6B 0E67 CD41 F689 BBA6 FB2C 5130 D55A 8819



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Description: PGP signature

Re: examples for man pages

[Marco Möller]

On 29.05.21 15:41, Richard Owlett wrote:
A couple of months ago there was a discussion of practical problems with 
adding examples to all man pages.


Someone pointed to a website of examples indexed by man page name. 
Unfortunately I didn't bookmark it and my attempts to do a web search 
failed.


Does anyone recall the URL?
TIA




I didn't follow that discussion, but I know this:
https://github.com/tldr-pages/tldr/tree/master
At the bottom of that page you will find in category "Web clients" a 
list of Websites of interest, which can show you the tldr ouptut.

https://tldr.dendron.so/
At the command prompt, without having to use a browser, I much liked the 
node.js based client with its colorful (helpful) output:

https://github.com/tldr-pages/tldr-node-client
Simply because of the ease of installation with "apt install tldr" I am 
also happy with the tldr client in the Debian repository.
I am not sure if this is what you have been asking for. However, I hope 
that also this information could be useful for you.

Good Luck!
Marco.

Re: examples for man pages

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Sat, May 29, 2021 at 08:41:02AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:
> A couple of months ago there was a discussion of practical problems with
> adding examples to all man pages.
> 
> Someone pointed to a website of examples indexed by man page name.
> Unfortunately I didn't bookmark it and my attempts to do a web search
> failed.
> 
> Does anyone recall the URL?
> TIA
> 
> 
Richard,

The thread appears to start here:

https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2021/03/msg01358.html

You can, if you wish, search the archives of this list quite well at 
https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/ at any point.

All the very best, as ever,

Andy C.

examples for man pages

[Richard Owlett]

A couple of months ago there was a discussion of practical problems with 
adding examples to all man pages.


Someone pointed to a website of examples indexed by man page name. 
Unfortunately I didn't bookmark it and my attempts to do a web search 
failed.


Does anyone recall the URL?
TIA

Re: Whether Man pages could visually be structured in an abstract form to be understood easier

[Michael Grant]

> Also, other man pages are similarly converted. Really, man pages are
> sick without a teacher, for me of course.
> Rajib

Rajib,

The pushback you will get here is not because it isn't a good idea to
have some documentation that is easier to use.  The problem is
historical and one of standardization.

So you understand, here's my understanding (I'm sure people will
correct me where I'm wrong):

Debian is one of many different linux distributions and is a variant
of Unix of which there are several still existing variants.  Unix
having it's roots in Multix and was said to be "Unix is Multix without the
balls".  All of these different operationg systems have the same
origin dating back to the 60s and 70s. The man pages are one of these
throw backs.

The pieces of software that make up debian don't all originate within
the debian project.  Much of the software originates from what we call
"upstream" meaning it's outside of debian and it "flows" into debian.

Nobody here on this list or even within the debian community has any
authority to get other variants of unix/linux to move to a new
manual format.

Furthermore, The unix/gnu-linux man pages are only supposed to be
succient reference pages, though often they do contain working
examples.  They are definitely not meant to be tutorials, they never
were and never have been.

For me, the biggest change I've seen globally to man pages is that
someone thankfully fixed the ROFF man processor to format man pages as
a single long page rather than multiple pages of fixed 66 lines with
headers and footers at 66 line intervals.  Those headers and footers
in the middle of the man page annoyed me for decades!  I don't know
who finally fixed that but if you're reading this, THANK YOU.

This change happened because someone upstream altered the workings of
the 'man' command which had a global effect.  Altering the contents of
man pages is not the same thing.

There are other systems such as 'info' which came out of the gnuemacs
info which I think is probably more appropriate for the tutorial like
things you want.

Things like the debian wiki that was mentioned, this is really debian
specific and again, unix/linux is a much larger thing of which debian
is a "consumer" of.  It would be quite good if when people built
software that beyond simple man pages that they were also nudged to
create longer documentation in info or something that could be used to
create some easy to use documentation site like some global unix wiki.

Anyway, just trying to get my point across that your ideas may be
laudible and good, but what you seek globally can't be accomplished
locally.  You either need to do it outside on the side of all the
software out there, a monumental effort, or somehow effectuate a
change to get software authors to write better documentation and ship
it with their software.

Michael Grant


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Re: Whether Man pages could visually be structured in an abstract form to be understood easier

[Greg Wooledge]

On Mon, Apr 19, 2021 at 01:18:32PM +0100, Joe wrote:
> Man pages were written as pure text files, beginning in a period when
> that was pretty much all the Web could do. You can read man pages on a
> server, which will not usually have any graphic display ability beyond
> curses/ncurses.

Man pages are written using a textual markup system called ROFF,
which stands for "run off".  ROFF dates back to 1971, according to
Wikipedia, and has been used for Unix's man pages since the very
beginning.

You can see the raw ROFF code in any of Debian's man pages.  For example,
try: zless /usr/share/man/man1/dpkg.1.gz

ROFF is much older than "the Web" (by about 20-25 years).  It originates
from a period when the manuals would have been printed on paper to be
read.  As such, ROFF's output is text with printer markup (for example,
boldface is done by emitting each character twice with a backspace in
between the two instances, underlining is done by emitting a backspace
and an underscore, and so on).

Pagers such as less know how to take printer-markup ROFF output and
turn it into terminal escape sequences for boldface, etc.  This gives
you the ability to read the man pages in a terminal, without having to
destroy a bunch of trees.

> It is only in the Windows world that server
> administrators are expected to need a GUI (and they don't really, most
> of them love PowerShell).

Amen.

Re: Whether Man pages could visually be structured in an abstract form to be understood easier

[Joe]

On Mon, 19 Apr 2021 16:45:58 +0530
"Susmita/Rajib"  wrote:

> My illustrious List Leaders, Members and support-givers,
> 
> In one of my earlier posts I had posted a request with the subject:
> Request: A Debian public Wiki repository/bank for complex code lines
> with examples, scripts, self-explanatory with terminal, otherwise
> Minimal explanatory texts
> Link:  https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2021/03/msg01522.html
> 
> I was thinking about the Pictorial/Abstract Representation, also
> called a Mind Map, posted here:
> bit.ly/Apt_readingManPages
> 
> I won't claim a copyright :D  (i.e., a CC share and alter for
> improvement license is given) and would want that the uploaded
> AptPrilimMindMap.svg file is edited, improved and sent back to me.
> 
> Also, other man pages are similarly converted. Really, man pages are
> sick without a teacher, for me of course.
> 
>
Man pages are not intended to be a tutorial, they are a reminder. They
are intended when you know what a command can do, but have forgotten
the exact syntax of the options. Some commands have a --help option
which may be enough, sometimes you need the man page.

If you need all operating instructions and many examples, the man pages
would not be sufficient. You need to find up-to-date tutorials on the
Net.

Man pages were written as pure text files, beginning in a period when
that was pretty much all the Web could do. You can read man pages on a
server, which will not usually have any graphic display ability beyond
curses/ncurses. It is only in the Windows world that server
administrators are expected to need a GUI (and they don't really, most
of them love PowerShell).

You are asking that a very large amount of work be done (my Synaptic
shows more than 83,000 packages available) by unpaid people and only to
help you, and which will be of no help to most server users. I think
this will not happen. 

-- 
Joe

Whether Man pages could visually be structured in an abstract form to be understood easier

[Susmita/Rajib]

My illustrious List Leaders, Members and support-givers,

In one of my earlier posts I had posted a request with the subject:
Request: A Debian public Wiki repository/bank for complex code lines
with examples, scripts, self-explanatory with terminal, otherwise
Minimal explanatory texts
Link:  https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2021/03/msg01522.html

I was thinking about the Pictorial/Abstract Representation, also
called a Mind Map, posted here:
bit.ly/Apt_readingManPages

I won't claim a copyright :D  (i.e., a CC share and alter for
improvement license is given) and would want that the uploaded
AptPrilimMindMap.svg file is edited, improved and sent back to me.

Also, other man pages are similarly converted. Really, man pages are
sick without a teacher, for me of course.

Best.
Rajib

Re: Something is buggy - was [Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic)]

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Ma, 02 iun 20, 10:48:45, Richard Owlett wrote:
> 
> My problem with dman revolves around running Stretch and debian.org
> defaulting to serving up information about "stable" {i.e. Buster}.

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=931992

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser


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Re: Something is buggy - was [Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic)]

[Richard Owlett]

On 06/02/2020 08:45 AM, The Wanderer wrote:

On 2020-06-02 at 09:05, Richard Owlett wrote:


On 06/01/2020 05:02 PM, Richard Owlett wrote:


On 06/01/2020 04:02 PM, Ralph Katz wrote:



apt show debian-goodies
...
debman - Easily view man pages from a binary .deb without extracting
 [man, apt* (via debget)]

So...  ~$ dman packagename   # will fetch the manpages as though they
were local.

Regards,
Ralph



Thank you. Looks interesting.
1st didn't work even after installing debian-goodies.
Suspect operator. Leaving now. will pursue in morning.



Copy and paste this morning from MATE terminal

richard@defaultinstall:~$ dman gforth
bash: dman: command not found
richard@defaultinstall:~$ debman gforth
Usage: debman [options] [-- man(1) options]  ...

Options should be exactly one of:
 -f package.deb  read pages from package.deb archive
 -p package  download .deb for package and read pages
 from there
richard@defaultinstall:~$ debman -p gforth
Usage: debman [options] [-- man(1) options]  ...

Options should be exactly one of:
 -f package.deb  read pages from package.deb archive
 -p package  download .deb for package and read pages
 from there
richard@defaultinstall:~$ debman -f gforth.deb
Usage: debman [options] [-- man(1) options]  ...

Options should be exactly one of:
 -f package.deb  read pages from package.deb archive
 -p package  download .deb for package and read pages
 from there
richard@defaultinstall:~$


I have verified that both
https://manpages.debian.org/stretch/gforth/gforth.1.en.html
and
https://manpages.debian.org/buster/gforth/gforth.1.en.html

Help please.


I've dug into this, and while I thought at first there was a bug here
myself, I've figured it out.

The command lines you're giving are specifying the package name, but not
the name of the man page. The "" argument at the end of
the usage section is not optional.

For example,

$ debman -p gforth vmgen

works fine for me.


For what I was trying to do, I should have written
  debman -p gforth gforth
instead of
  debman -p gforth

My problem with dman revolves around running Stretch and debian.org 
defaulting to serving up information about "stable" {i.e. Buster}.


My bandwidth constraints cause me to purchase DVD sets to upgrade. And 
this time I had to purchase a flash drive instead instead of physical 
DVDs. The intended target machine cannot boot from a flash drive so I 
got delayed by housekeeping chores.


More later.
Thank you.



If you need to find out the name of the actual man page (since, e.g., it
isn't intuitively obvious that gforth will contain a man page for the
name 'vmgen'), something like

$ apt-file show gforth | grep /man/

ought to do it; just drop the leading path (up through the final '/')
and the trailing ".X.gz" (where X is a number) from each filename, and
it should be a valid man-page argument to debman.

(I'm not sure what it will do if there's a package which installs two
man pages with the same name but different sections, because I haven't
yet found any examples of packages which do that.)

Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic)

[David Wright]

On Tue 02 Jun 2020 at 06:13:00 (-0500), Richard Owlett wrote:
> On 05/30/2020 04:05 PM, David Wright wrote:
> > On Sat 30 May 2020 at 10:08:41 (-0500), Richard Owlett wrote:
> > > On 05/30/2020 09:50 AM, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> > > > On Sat, May 30, 2020 at 04:13:22PM +0200, l0f...@tuta.io wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > [...]
> > > > 
> > > > > I would suggest the following instead:
> > > > 
> > > > [download + unpack]
> > > > 
> > > > > Of course, the method indicated by Tomas is great and may be easier 
> > > > > than mine (+ doesn't leave Debian package files on your computer).
> > > > 
> > > > I don't think "my" method is easier. Personally, I'd go with yours
> > > > any time (I dislike browsers) -- but I had the impression (wrongly?)
> > > > that the OP wanted a "webby" solution. But thanks for chiming in
> > > > with alternatives!
> > > > 
> > > 
> > > Yes. A "webby" solution can have two benefits in my environment:
> > >a. may minimize download downloaded byte count.
> > >b. following intervening links and cross references can lead to
> > >   answering important un-asked questions.
> > 
> > For man pages, I type   man foo   into google. That usually throws
> > up one or two links from different sources.
> > [snip]
> 
> You missed my point entirely. I have accessed the man page via
> https://manpages.debian.org/ . It lacks information *CRITICAL* to
> whether or not to install the package. It skirts the issue by
> referring to a file which will exist, *if and only if*, the package
> has already been installed. I.E. classical infinite loop ;}

My References header includes two of you posts. The first says

"NOTE BENE This post is about man pages as a class"

and the second says

"A "webby" solution can have two benefits in my environment"

as seen above. I ignored your little complaint about a specific man
page; instead, I addressed the Debian man pages in the subject line,
and particularly when the name of the command or package is hazy.

Thanks to Andrei for the list of references.

Cheers,
David.

Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic)

[Brian]

On Tue 02 Jun 2020 at 06:13:00 -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:

> On 05/30/2020 04:05 PM, David Wright wrote:
> > On Sat 30 May 2020 at 10:08:41 (-0500), Richard Owlett wrote:
> > > On 05/30/2020 09:50 AM, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> > > > On Sat, May 30, 2020 at 04:13:22PM +0200, l0f...@tuta.io wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > [...]
> > > > 
> > > > > I would suggest the following instead:
> > > > 
> > > > [download + unpack]
> > > > 
> > > > > Of course, the method indicated by Tomas is great and may be easier 
> > > > > than mine (+ doesn't leave Debian package files on your computer).
> > > > 
> > > > I don't think "my" method is easier. Personally, I'd go with yours
> > > > any time (I dislike browsers) -- but I had the impression (wrongly?)
> > > > that the OP wanted a "webby" solution. But thanks for chiming in
> > > > with alternatives!
> > > > 
> > > 
> > > Yes. A "webby" solution can have two benefits in my environment:
> > >a. may minimize download downloaded byte count.
> > >b. following intervening links and cross references can lead to
> > >   answering important un-asked questions.
> > 
> > For man pages, I type   man foo   into google. That usually throws
> > up one or two links from different sources.
> > [snip]
> 
> You missed my point entirely. I have accessed the man page via
> https://manpages.debian.org/ . It lacks information *CRITICAL* to whether or
> not to install the package. It skirts the issue by referring to a file which
> will exist, *if and only if*, the package has already been installed. I.E.
> classical infinite loop ;}

'apt download ' has been mentioned a few times. The package
may be opened and the contents of /usr/share/doc/ viewed.
This takes all of two minutes. Is there something lacking in this
technique? Too simple and straightforward, perhaps?

-- 
Brian

Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic)

[Joe Pfeiffer]

Richard Owlett  writes:

> I the recent thread about returning a Debian installation to its
> original state "popularity-contest" was mentioned.
>
> I wished to compare it to other tools mentioned in that thread.
> Obvious stating point -- read the man page.
> As I never installed its package I went to
> https://manpages.debian.org/buster/popularity-contest/popularity-contest.8.en.html
> .
>
> It did not explicitly answer my question.
> However, under "SEE ALSO" it stated:
>> Additional documentation is in /usr/share/doc/popularity-contest/.
>
> *PROBLEM*
> As package is not installed, that directory does *NOT* exist.
>
> Where to find required documentation on the web?
>
> NOTE BENE
> This post is about man pages as a class.

Asking for a man page to include all of the documentation about a
package isn't reasonable -- there are man pages like that (bash comes to
mind), and it isn't a page, it's a book.  A man page tries to be a
succinct summary, so someone can look up details about running a program,
or about a file format, in a hurry.

If you want the full documentation on something you haven't installed,
the man page is the wrong place to look.  Googling 'debian
popularity-contest' (instead of looking specifically for the man page)
points me to
https://salsa.debian.org/popularity-contest-team/popularity-contest#:~:text=The%20popularity%2Dcontest%20package%20sets,go%20on%20the%20first%20CD.
which has a wealth of information.

Re: Something is buggy - was [Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic)]

[l0f4r0]

Hi,

2 juin 2020 à 15:05 de rowl...@cloud85.net:

> On 06/01/2020 05:02 PM, Richard Owlett wrote:
>
> I am running Debian 9.8 with MATE desktop
>
> Synaptic reports:
>
>> Commit Log for Mon Jun  1 16:45:47 2020
>> Installed the following packages:
>> curl (7.52.1-5+deb9u9)
>> dctrl-tools (2.24-2+b1)
>> debian-goodies (0.69.1)
>> libcurl3 (7.52.1-5+deb9u9)
>>
>
> Copy and paste this morning from MATE terminal
>
>> richard@defaultinstall:~$ dman gforth
>> bash: dman: command not found
>> richard@defaultinstall:~$ debman gforth
>> Usage: debman [options] [-- man(1) options]  ...
>>
>> Options should be exactly one of:
>> -f package.deb  read pages from package.deb archive
>> -p package  download .deb for package and read pages
>> from there
>> richard@defaultinstall:~$ debman -p gforth
>> Usage: debman [options] [-- man(1) options]  ...
>>
>> Options should be exactly one of:
>> -f package.deb  read pages from package.deb archive
>> -p package  download .deb for package and read pages
>> from there
>> richard@defaultinstall:~$ debman -f gforth.deb
>> Usage: debman [options] [-- man(1) options]  ...
>>
>> Options should be exactly one of:
>> -f package.deb  read pages from package.deb archive
>> -p package  download .deb for package and read pages
>> from there
>>
> richard@defaultinstall:~$ 
> I have verified that both
> https://manpages.debian.org/stretch/gforth/gforth.1.en.html
> and
> https://manpages.debian.org/buster/gforth/gforth.1.en.html
>
Surely you did that but you haven't read previous answers on this mailing-list 
though otherwise you would not have said it is "buggy"...

Regarding dman it seems normal since your debian-goodies version is really old 
(0.69.1).
Indeed, dman seems to have been included from debian-goodies v0.70:

debian-goodies (0.70) experimental; urgency=low

  [ Antoine Beaupré ]
  * Add dman script from Ubuntu, modified to fetch pages directly from
    manpages.debian.org, see https://github.com/Debian/debiman/issues/57
    (Closes: #860920)

  [ Axel Beckert ]
  * Fix missing close statement in checkrestart. (c.f. #84)
    Thanks Emilio Pozuelo Monfort!
  * Suggest lsb-release for new dman command.

-- Axel Beckert   Sat, 22 Apr 2017 01:22:31 +0200

Best regards,
l0f4r0

Re: Something is buggy - was [Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic)]

[The Wanderer]

On 2020-06-02 at 09:05, Richard Owlett wrote:

> On 06/01/2020 05:02 PM, Richard Owlett wrote:
>
>> On 06/01/2020 04:02 PM, Ralph Katz wrote:

>>> apt show debian-goodies
>>> ...
>>> debman - Easily view man pages from a binary .deb without extracting
>>> [man, apt* (via debget)]
>>>
>>> So...  ~$ dman packagename   # will fetch the manpages as though they
>>> were local.
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>> Ralph
>> 
>> 
>> Thank you. Looks interesting.
>> 1st didn't work even after installing debian-goodies.
>> Suspect operator. Leaving now. will pursue in morning.

> Copy and paste this morning from MATE terminal
>> richard@defaultinstall:~$ dman gforth
>> bash: dman: command not found
>> richard@defaultinstall:~$ debman gforth
>> Usage: debman [options] [-- man(1) options]  ...
>> 
>> Options should be exactly one of:
>> -f package.deb  read pages from package.deb archive
>> -p package  download .deb for package and read pages
>> from there
>> richard@defaultinstall:~$ debman -p gforth
>> Usage: debman [options] [-- man(1) options]  ...
>> 
>> Options should be exactly one of:
>> -f package.deb  read pages from package.deb archive
>> -p package  download .deb for package and read pages
>> from there
>> richard@defaultinstall:~$ debman -f gforth.deb
>> Usage: debman [options] [-- man(1) options]  ...
>> 
>> Options should be exactly one of:
>> -f package.deb  read pages from package.deb archive
>> -p package  download .deb for package and read pages
>> from there
>> richard@defaultinstall:~$ 
> 
> I have verified that both
> https://manpages.debian.org/stretch/gforth/gforth.1.en.html
>and
> https://manpages.debian.org/buster/gforth/gforth.1.en.html
> 
> Help please.

I've dug into this, and while I thought at first there was a bug here
myself, I've figured it out.

The command lines you're giving are specifying the package name, but not
the name of the man page. The "" argument at the end of
the usage section is not optional.

For example,

$ debman -p gforth vmgen

works fine for me.

If you need to find out the name of the actual man page (since, e.g., it
isn't intuitively obvious that gforth will contain a man page for the
name 'vmgen'), something like

$ apt-file show gforth | grep /man/

ought to do it; just drop the leading path (up through the final '/')
and the trailing ".X.gz" (where X is a number) from each filename, and
it should be a valid man-page argument to debman.

(I'm not sure what it will do if there's a package which installs two
man pages with the same name but different sections, because I haven't
yet found any examples of packages which do that.)

-- 
   The Wanderer

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw



signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Something is buggy - was [Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic)]

[Richard Owlett]

On 06/01/2020 05:02 PM, Richard Owlett wrote:

On 06/01/2020 04:02 PM, Ralph Katz wrote:

On 5/30/20 3:52 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:
...

*PROBLEM*
As package is not installed, that directory does *NOT* exist.

Where to find required documentation on the web?

NOTE BENE
This post is about man pages as a class.



apt show debian-goodies
...
debman - Easily view man pages from a binary .deb without extracting
    [man, apt* (via debget)]

So...  ~$ dman packagename   # will fetch the manpages as though they
were local.

Regards,
Ralph



Thank you. Looks interesting.
1st didn't work even after installing debian-goodies.
Suspect operator. Leaving now. will pursue in morning.


I am running Debian 9.8 with MATE desktop

Synaptic reports:

Commit Log for Mon Jun  1 16:45:47 2020
Installed the following packages:
curl (7.52.1-5+deb9u9)
dctrl-tools (2.24-2+b1)
debian-goodies (0.69.1)
libcurl3 (7.52.1-5+deb9u9)



Copy and paste this morning from MATE terminal

richard@defaultinstall:~$ dman gforth
bash: dman: command not found
richard@defaultinstall:~$ debman gforth
Usage: debman [options] [-- man(1) options]  ...

Options should be exactly one of:
-f package.deb  read pages from package.deb archive
-p package  download .deb for package and read pages
from there
richard@defaultinstall:~$ debman -p gforth
Usage: debman [options] [-- man(1) options]  ...

Options should be exactly one of:
-f package.deb  read pages from package.deb archive
-p package  download .deb for package and read pages
from there
richard@defaultinstall:~$ debman -f gforth.deb
Usage: debman [options] [-- man(1) options]  ...

Options should be exactly one of:
-f package.deb  read pages from package.deb archive
-p package  download .deb for package and read pages
from there
richard@defaultinstall:~$ 


I have verified that both
https://manpages.debian.org/stretch/gforth/gforth.1.en.html
  and
https://manpages.debian.org/buster/gforth/gforth.1.en.html

Help please.
TIA

Re: [CLARIFICATION] Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic)

[Dan Ritter]

Richard Owlett wrote: 
> In a recent post a particular package was mentioned.
> I was not familiar with it.
> I went to appropriate URL under https://manpages.debian.org/buster .
> 
> It did not explicitly answer my question.
> However, under "SEE ALSO" it stated that additional documentation would be
> under /usr/share/doc/...  .
> 
> *PROBLEM*
> As package is not installed, that directory does *NOT* exist.

*ANSWER*

Option 1: Install the package. Now the docs are in
/usr/share/doc/PACKAGENAME

Option 2: Get the package (apt install -d will work, or acquire
it from the package web page) and uncompress it with ar in a
location of your choosing; then read the docs.

There may be other options, but each of these will work.

-dsr-

Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic)

[Richard Owlett]

On 05/30/2020 04:05 PM, David Wright wrote:

On Sat 30 May 2020 at 10:08:41 (-0500), Richard Owlett wrote:

On 05/30/2020 09:50 AM, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:

On Sat, May 30, 2020 at 04:13:22PM +0200, l0f...@tuta.io wrote:

[...]


I would suggest the following instead:


[download + unpack]


Of course, the method indicated by Tomas is great and may be easier than mine 
(+ doesn't leave Debian package files on your computer).


I don't think "my" method is easier. Personally, I'd go with yours
any time (I dislike browsers) -- but I had the impression (wrongly?)
that the OP wanted a "webby" solution. But thanks for chiming in
with alternatives!



Yes. A "webby" solution can have two benefits in my environment:
   a. may minimize download downloaded byte count.
   b. following intervening links and cross references can lead to
  answering important un-asked questions.


For man pages, I type   man foo   into google. That usually throws
up one or two links from different sources.
[snip]


You missed my point entirely. I have accessed the man page via 
https://manpages.debian.org/ . It lacks information *CRITICAL* to 
whether or not to install the package. It skirts the issue by referring 
to a file which will exist, *if and only if*, the package has already 
been installed. I.E. classical infinite loop ;}

[CLARIFICATION] Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic)

[Richard Owlett]

In a recent post a particular package was mentioned.
I was not familiar with it.
I went to appropriate URL under https://manpages.debian.org/buster .

It did not explicitly answer my question.
However, under "SEE ALSO" it stated that additional documentation would 
be under /usr/share/doc/...  .


*PROBLEM*
As package is not installed, that directory does *NOT* exist.

Where to find referenced documentation on the web?

NOTE BENE
This post is about man pages as a class.

Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic)

[l0f4r0]

Hi,

2 juin 2020 à 00:02 de rowl...@cloud85.net:

> On 06/01/2020 04:02 PM, Ralph Katz wrote:
>
>> apt show debian-goodies
>> ...
>> debman - Easily view man pages from a binary .deb without extracting
>>  [man, apt* (via debget)]
>>
>> So...  ~$ dman packagename   # will fetch the manpages as though they
>> were local.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Ralph
>>
> Thank you. Looks interesting.
> 1st didn't work even after installing debian-goodies.
> Suspect operator. Leaving now. will pursue in morning.
>
Are you speaking of debman? If so I suspect you forgot the last part with the 
command you want its manpages.
In short, you have multiple possibilities:

dman cmd
debman -f local_package.deb cmd
debman -p package cmd
debmany package|local_package.deb

Best regards,
l0f4r0