Re: [PATCH] docbook: Added support for generating man files

Andries Brouwer
2003-07-19T07:04:27Z

On Sat, Jul 19, 2003 at 12:47:31PM +1000, Michael Still wrote:
> On Sat, 19 Jul 2003, Andries Brouwer wrote:
>
> > Please put all legalities in comments - behind .\" we do not have to read
> > them, but they are there if anyone cares.
>
> Ok. After having done some more poking, I can't see a way of doing this
> with docbook2man -- there doesn't appear to be any way of emitting
> comments. There strike me as two options here: write a script to convert
> SGML to man pages, or perhaps just insert a single sentence into the
> "About this Document" section which explains where to look for copyright
> information.
>
> Any thoughts?

You do this in two steps: first construct an sgml document, then invoke
docbook2man.

So, first you have to figure out what the proper docbook markup is
for such material. According to me it is <docinfo>...</docinfo>,
to be placed inside <refentry> before <refmeta>.
So you do that - example script fragments appended below.

Next, the docbook2man stage. My presently installed docbook2man says

# IGNORE.
sgml('<DOCINFO>', sub { push_output('nul'); });
sgml('</DOCINFO>', sub { pop_output(); });

That is, it does not produce any output for a docinfo section.
I consider that a bug in docbook2man - it should output nroff comments.
Probably this bug will be fixed sooner or later.
(I'll cc Steve Cheng who is listed as maintainer.)
In the meantime I do not worry too much about this missing copyright.

By the way, you start copying at <legalnotice>, but I consider that
the least interesting part. The fact that these docs were written
by Alan Cox is much more interesting. In other words, it might be
a good idea to enlarge this <docinfo> section a bit.

Andries

In split-man:

elsif($mode == 2){
if(/<refmeta>/){
$refdata = "$refdata\n<docinfo>\n$front\n$blurb\n</docinfo>\n"
}
$refdata = "$refdata$_";
}

Here $front is the original one - do not delete <legalnotice>.
And $blurb is your text:

<authorblurb>
If you have comments on the formatting of this manpage, then please contact
Michael Still (mikal\@stillhq.com).