Errors in man pages, here: suffixes(7): Clarification

Errors in man pages, here: suffixes(7): Clarification

[Helge Kreutzmann]

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.

**

The man page claims that suffixes are separated by a dot from the filename
and contain one or more letters.

However, for RCS this does not hold, the separation is done by a comma
and the suffix may contain characters besides letters, so the first
concrete examples contradicts the general rule.

msgid "files for RCS (Revision Control System)"

-- 
      Dr. Helge Kreutzmann                     debian@helgefjell.de
           Dipl.-Phys.                   http://www.helgefjell.de/debian.php
        64bit GNU powered                     gpg signed mail preferred
           Help keep free software libre: http://www.ffii.de/

Re: Errors in man pages, here: suffixes(7): Clarification

[Michael Kerrisk (man-pages)]

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.
> 
> **
> 
> The man page claims that suffixes are separated by a dot from the filename
> and contain one or more letters.
> 
> However, for RCS this does not hold, the separation is done by a comma
> and the suffix may contain characters besides letters, so the first
> concrete examples contradicts the general rule.
> 
> msgid "files for RCS (Revision Control System)"
> 

Patch as below.

Thanks,

Michael

diff --git a/man7/suffixes.7 b/man7/suffixes.7
index 0aaba137c..6063bacb9 100644
--- a/man7/suffixes.7
+++ b/man7/suffixes.7
@@ -41,7 +41,7 @@
 suffixes \- list of file suffixes
 .SH DESCRIPTION
 It is customary to indicate the contents of a file with the file suffix,
-which consists of a period, followed by one or more letters.
+which (typically) consists of a period, followed by one or more letters.
 Many standard utilities, such as compilers, use this to recognize the type of
 file they are dealing with.
 The


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