Re: [HACKERS] Re: [ANNOUNCE] New man pages

> Pages from multi-character sections are stored in the directory for the
> first character. For instance: /usr/man/man7/select.7l.gz

Oh! afaik that is one option; the man system in general could also
handle man7l/select.7.gz right? You would update /etc/man.config to
add, say, "7l" to the list of sections.

But is is against Debian policy to invent new directories for pages? I
see that my RH linux system actually does about the same as Debian;
there are some ".1x" files in the /usr/man/man1 directory.

> >> I would like to use existing sections, rather than do our own. I found
> >> I had to modify the man page search to look in a manl, and others may
> >> have the same problem.
> For Debian, I have relocated the SQL pages to section 7l and commands such
> as psql and createuser go in section 1. Policy requires me to use one of
> the numbered sections (1-8), though I can use a suffix to ensure uniqueness.
> On Debian GNU/Linux, the sections are:
> 1 User commands
> 2 System calls
> 3 Library routines
> 4 Devices
> 5 File formats
> 6 Games
> 7 Miscellaneous
> 8 System administration

Same for Linux ("man 7 man" has a summary).

> >otoh, it does eliminate the possibility of man page pollution if we
> >manage to have the same man page name as some other existing page.
> As of course we do; for example, select is also in section 2.

A near miss, since we weren't likely to have chosen section 2 for
*our* select. But it does illustrate the risk.

> >*That* would be a bad thing. And in general adding ~75 man pages to
> >existing sections is a pretty big load...
> I'm not sure that's much of a problem. These are the figures from my
> system for /usr/man, /usr/share/man, /usr/X11R6/man and /usr/local/man
> combined:

Right.

So, do Oliver's conventions make sense for most platforms? istm that
they do. Would folks have problems with a mapping similar to what
Oliver uses? We would use section one (1) and section seven (7), with
a qualifier of ell (l) on each of the man page names. I won't do
anything about it right now, but would like to get a consensus now
that the subject has come up. Speak up now or forever hold your...

- Thomas

--
Thomas Lockhart lockhart(at)alumni(dot)caltech(dot)edu
South Pasadena, California