[Bug-wget] wget manpage question/suggestion

[Noèl Köthe]

Hello,

the source of the info and manpage is wget.texi. From this file wget.pod
is generated and then pod2man creates the manpage.
The result has the problem that sentences are truncated sometimes and
subnodes are skipped.

Because IMHO a complete documentation but different looking one is
better than a broken one I changed this generation with the following
patch in Debian unstable to test:

--- a/doc/Makefile.in
+++ b/doc/Makefile.in
@@ -69,8 +69,10 @@ wget.info: $(srcdir)/wget.texi $(SAMPLERCTEXI) 
$(srcdir)/version.texi
        $(MAKEINFO) -I$(srcdir) $(srcdir)/wget.texi

 .SECONDARY: wget.pod
-wget.pod: $(srcdir)/wget.texi $(srcdir)/version.texi
-       $(TEXI2POD) $(srcdir)/wget.texi $@
+#wget.pod: $(srcdir)/wget.texi $(srcdir)/version.texi
+#      $(TEXI2POD) $(srcdir)/wget.texi $@
+wget.pod: wget.info
+       info2pod wget.info > $@

 $(MAN): wget.pod
        $(POD2MAN) --center="GNU Wget" --release="GNU Wget @VERSION@" $? > $@

Adrian Knoth reported and described the problem some time ago here:
http://bugs.debian.org/326622

The problem with this is that the manpage structure is different as
users expect.

AFAIK manpages are the primary source for users and infopages (which is
primary for wget) is not often used/searched by users.

Another option to fix the manpage could be to just point from the
manpage to the infopages but I don't know if this is acceptable for
anybody.

My favorite solution would be to remove the info pages and work on
create a good and complete manpage (maybe with going to docbook or
anyting else).

What are your comments of the manpage change and the alternatives on
man/infopages?

thx.

-- 
Noèl Köthe <noel debian.org>
Debian GNU/Linux, www.debian.org

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