DAVENPORT: Re: New docbook2man-spec.pl patches

[Steve Cheng <elmert@ipoline.com>]

On Tue, 10 Aug 1999, Norman Walsh wrote:

> I don't agree, exactly. It should have nothing to do with the filename.
> There are four pieces of information that can come into play:
> 
>   refentrytitle
>   refdescriptor
>   refname
>   manvolnum
> 
> If a RefEntry has a refentrytitle, that should be used, otherwise the
> refdescriptor should be used, if it has one, and failing both of those,
> the first refname should be used.

Are these some sort of 'authoritive' processing expectations?

Because I don't agree with the "use first refname" --
it should use ALL refnames.  And in some situations I want refnames to
override refentrytitle.  Here's why:

: Table of Contents
[... rendering by Modular Stylesheets of LibGGI doc, forget which version ...]
:   3. Library control
: 
:         ggiInit -- Initialize and uninitialize LibGGI
:         ggiPanic -- Exit LibGGI programs for fatal errors

Ideally it should be:

:         ggiInit, ggiExit -- Initialize and uninitialize LibGGI

(A single RefMeta/RefEntryTitle is pretty necessary if you want standard
man pages...)

But not a deliberating error anyways...

> So the xref to the refentry above should be "this page", or "this page(1)"
> if it has a manvolnum.

I don't know of any manpages that don't have a section, i.e. manvolnum,
so I think it should have a user-specified default manvolnum if not
specified.

> However, since you've provided an endterm on xref, it must resolve to
> simply "this page".

Does it?  Is something like:

: this page [manpage(1)]

where the stuff in brackets is the actual xref acceptable?

> Then you shouldn't be pointing to it with endterm! :-)

The whole confusion started because of a simple bug in docbook2man and
user thought that was a feature :)
Resolved by PM.

-- 
Steve Cheng

email: steve@ggi-project.org
www: <http://shell.ipoline.com/~elmert/>