Re: Errors in man pages, here: iconv(1): Formatting/Markup

["Michael Kerrisk (man-pages)" <mtk.manpages@gmail.com>]

On 4/19/20 8:48 AM, Helge Kreutzmann wrote:
> Dear manpages maintainers.
> the manpage-l10n project maintains a large number of translations of
> man pages both from a large variety of sources (including manpages) as
> well for a large variety of target languages.
> 
> During their work translators notice different possible issues in the
> original (english) man pages. Sometiems this is a straightforward
> typo, sometimes a hard to read sentence, sometimes this is a convention
> not held up and sometimes we simply do not understand the original.
> 
> We use several distributions as sources and update regularly (at
> least every 2 month). This means we are fairly recent (some
> distributions like archlinux also update frequently) but might miss
> the latest upstream version once a while, so the error might be
> already fixed. We apologize and ask you to close the issue immediately
> if this should be the case, but given the huge volume of projects and
> the very limited number of volunteers we are not able to double check
> each and every issue.
> 
> Secondly we translators see the manpages in the neutral po format,
> i.e. converted and harmonized, but not the original source (be it man,
> groff, xml or other). So we cannot provide a true patch (where
> possible), but only an approximation which you need to translate into
> your source format.
> 
> Finally the issues I'm reporting have accumulated over time and are
> not always discovered by me, so sometimes my description of the
> problem my be a bit limited - do not hesitate to ask so we can clarify
> them.
> 
> I'm now reporting the errors for your project. As requested, each
> issue is sent in an unique mail for easier tracking on your side. If
> future reports should use another channel, please let me know.
> 
> **
> 
> Missing markup/formatting of "gconv"

I agree that there's a little inconsistency here, but I'm not
sure that changing the formatting on all instances of 'gconv'
is an improvement. I'm ignoring this, pending further explanation.

Thanks,

Michael

> 
> "If B<GCONV_PATH> is not set, B<iconv_open>(3)  loads the system gconv module "
> "configuration cache file created by B<iconvconfig>(8)  and then, based on "
> "the configuration, loads the gconv modules needed to perform the "
> "conversion.  If the system gconv module configuration cache file is not "
> "available then the system gconv module configuration file is used."
> --
> "If B<GCONV_PATH> is defined (as a colon-separated list of pathnames), the "
> "system gconv module configuration cache is not used.  Instead, "
> "B<iconv_open>(3)  first tries to load the configuration files by searching "
> "the directories in B<GCONV_PATH> in order, followed by the system default "
> "gconv module configuration file.  If a directory does not contain a gconv "
> "module configuration file, any gconv modules that it may contain are "
> "ignored.  If a directory contains a gconv module configuration file and it "
> "is determined that a module needed for this conversion is available in the "
> "directory, then the needed module is loaded from that directory, the order "
> "being such that the first suitable module found in B<GCONV_PATH> is used.  "
> "This allows users to use custom modules and even replace system-provided "
> "modules by providing such modules in B<GCONV_PATH> directories."
> --
> msgid "Usual system default gconv module configuration file."
> --
> msgid "Usual system gconv module configuration cache."
> 


-- 
Michael Kerrisk
Linux man-pages maintainer; http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/
Linux/UNIX System Programming Training: http://man7.org/training/