Order priority issues for special 3type sub-section

Guillem Jover
2024-03-06T23:30:55Z

Hi!

I just realized the other day that we have currently a problem with
the order priority for a couple of the manual pages in (at least) the
3type sub-section. These pages have been provided by libbsd in the
3bsd sub-section for some time, and that sorts earlier than 3type.
This has not been a problem for the section 3 pages, as then those
will always be preferred if present over the 3bsd ones. This also
means I might be reluctant to add new 3bsd manual pages related to
types, to avoid future occlusions.

I think this only affects timeval.3* and timespec.3*. But I'm not
sure how best this would be solved though. :/ Hmm perhaps thinking
about it, I could rewrite these manual pages and only provide them
for the TIMEVAL_TO_TIMESPEC and TIMESPEC_TO_TIMEVAL macros.

But perhaps this is a more general problem as «t» sorts pretty late,
for example later than «3cxx», «3ncurses», «3perl», «3pm», «3p» or
«3posix». And ah, now I recalled the SECTION option in man-db, which
on my system already lists 3type before many others, but I guess the
problem is still that unlisted sub-sections get folded into their
parent section, so perhaps some of these need to be proposed for
addition there. Not sure about other man pagers though.

(BTW, I very much like that these types are provided on their own
manual pages, and their own sub-section, thanks for that!)

Thanks,
Guillem