Re: [bug #58098] [PATCH] build system man page failure

[J William Piggott]

On Thu, 2 Apr 2020, Bjarni Ingi Gislason wrote:

> Follow-up Comment #3, bug #58098 (project groff):
>
>  The report (request, concern) is not invalid, but valid!
>
>  The fact is, that the file "groff_mmse.7" is installed in the wrong
> directory.

I think there are two levels of discussion: should groff follow the
FHS[1] standard; and where should a man page with only one encoding go.

I mistakenly thought that groff_mmse.7 was intended to be the Swedish
version of groff_mm.7, but that is not the case.

I agree with Ingo that since it is the only documentation available, it
should be in the man root and shown to everyone. If the user is desperate
for the information they could use a translator.

If there were an English version of the page, then the arguments
regarding the FHS[1] could be perused, IMO.

Ingo says that some system do not follow the FHS[1] man page hierarchy.
I would be interested to see a list of who does and who does not.
Perhaps groff should favor the majority, and then fall back to Ingo's
argument that the minority systems need their packagers make the
adjustments.

Or maybe the argument should be that groff should follow GNU? Does GNU
have a man(1) implementation? Is it unoffically the savannah hosted
man-db[2]?

[1] 4.11.6. /usr/share/man : Manual pages:
    https://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/FHS_3.0/fhs-3.0.txt

[2] "NLS manual pages"
http://git.savannah.nongnu.org/cgit/man-db.git/tree/manual/files.me#n212

>  A "wrong" cure does not make an issue invalid nor makes it disappear.
>
>  The mistake in the patch is to change the name from "groff_mmse" to
> "groff_mm".
>
>  In my system the installed software (Debian) puts it in
> "/usr/share/man/sv/man7".
>
>  The "man" programme does thus not find it.
>
>  On a "CentOS release 6.10 (Final)" system it is placed in the
> directory, that "groff" dictates, although a directory
> "/usr/share/man/sv/" exists (man7/ is missing there).
>
>  So "groff" is wrong in this case!
>
>  GROFF is a GNU project!
>
>  Why should a foreign language man page pop up?

Because it is the only documentation available for everyone.

>  The report is thus about a bug (defect), not a "wish" nor invalid.
>
>
>    _______________________________________________________
>
> Reply to this item at:
>
>  <https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?58098>
>
> _______________________________________________
>  Message sent via Savannah
>  https://savannah.gnu.org/