Debian bug report logs - #1801, boring messages

Message sent to debian-devel@pixar.com:

Subject: Bug#1801: tar manpage missing
Reply-To: Austin Donnelly <and1000@cam.ac.uk>, debian-bugs@pixar.com
Resent-From: Austin Donnelly <and1000@cam.ac.uk>
Resent-To: debian-devel@pixar.com
Resent-Date: Sat, 04 Nov 1995 15:33:02 GMT
Resent-Message-ID: <debian-bugs-handler.1801.B11041530190@pixar.com>
Resent-Sender: iwj10@cus.cam.ac.uk
Date: Sat, 4 Nov 1995 15:28:29 +0000 (GMT)
From: Austin Donnelly <and1000@cam.ac.uk>
To: debian-bugs@pixar.com
Message-Id: <Pine.LNX.3.91.951104152010.483A-100000@valour.pem.cam.ac.uk>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

I know the business of manpages for GNU software is a religious issue,
but tar seems to be missing one.

A number of different linux systems have manpages for GNU tar,
although the tar package doesn't contain one as such.

Could a manpage be maintained separately ?

Austin

Message sent:

From: iwj10@thor.cam.ac.uk (Ian Jackson)
To: Austin Donnelly <and1000@cam.ac.uk>
Subject: Bug#1801: Acknowledgement (was: tar manpage missing)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.91.951104152010.483A-100000@valour.pem.cam.ac.uk>
References: <Pine.LNX.3.91.951104152010.483A-100000@valour.pem.cam.ac.uk>

Thank you for the problem report you have sent regarding Debian GNU/Linux.
This is an automatically generated reply, to let you know your message has
been received.  It is being forwarded to the developers' mailing list for
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If you wish to submit further information on your problem, please send
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Ian Jackson
(maintainer, debian-bugs)

Message sent to debian-devel@pixar.com:

Subject: Bug#1801: tar manpage missing
Reply-To: "Susan G. Kleinmann" <sgk@zork.tiac.net>, debian-bugs@pixar.com
Resent-From: "Susan G. Kleinmann" <sgk@zork.tiac.net>
Resent-To: debian-devel@pixar.com
Resent-Date: Sat, 04 Nov 1995 16:03:01 GMT
Resent-Message-ID: <debian-bugs-handler.1801.B11041557440@pixar.com>
Resent-Sender: iwj10@cus.cam.ac.uk
Message-Id: <199511041554.KAA01391@zork.tiac.net>
To: Austin Donnelly <and1000@cam.ac.uk>, debian-bugs@Pixar.com
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sat, 04 Nov 1995 15:28:29 GMT."
             <Pine.LNX.3.91.951104152010.483A-100000@valour.pem.cam.ac.uk>
Date: Sat, 04 Nov 1995 10:56:22 -0500
From: "Susan G. Kleinmann" <sgk@zork.tiac.net>

Hi Austin --
Did you know about the info page on tar?
All you have to do is to type
info tar
and you get it.

I am considering starting a project which would:
a) define a standard template for man pages in Linux.  I know it would
appear that one already exists, but it turns out that what really, really
exists is a good overall description of what should be included in the
man pages (in /usr/doc/HOWTO/Mini/Manpages), but that's leaves room
for ambiguities, and I believe a template would be a very useful addition.
b) begin the slow, laborious process of writing new manpages where they
don't exist, then start re-formatting existing man pages to a standard
template.

Once that happens (this coudl take more than a year) then it seems to em
the manpages would be ready for a major overhaul -- i.e., an automatic
transformation into hypertext, which could/should be combined with a
much more powerful indexing scheme than is currently available through
apropos.

Perhaps you know of some other progress on this issue.  If so, I'd
be interested to hear about it.

BTW, I did write the man pages for the acct package myself, and have
forwarded them to the author for comments and to the package maintainer.
It turned out (no surprise) that in the process of doing this, I found a
number of ambiguities and actual inaccuracies in the information that
had existed.  So it produced (I hope) some technical progress as well
as straight information transfer.  The package developer may take a few
days yet, though, to go through all of the stuff I sent him and to
change whatever needs changing.  That's why you haven't heard more about
it.

Sorry for such a long email.
Susan Kleinmann
sgk@sgk.tiac.net
>
> I know the business of manpages for GNU software is a religious issue,
> but tar seems to be missing one.
>
> A number of different linux systems have manpages for GNU tar,
> although the tar package doesn't contain one as such.
>
> Could a manpage be maintained separately ?
>
> Austin
>
>

Message sent:

From: iwj10@thor.cam.ac.uk (Ian Jackson)
To: "Susan G. Kleinmann" <sgk@zork.tiac.net>
Subject: Bug#1801: Info received (was Bug#1801: tar manpage missing)
In-Reply-To: <199511041554.KAA01391@zork.tiac.net>
References: <199511041554.KAA01391@zork.tiac.net>

Thank you for the additional information you have supplied regarding
this problem report.  It has been forwarded to the developers to
accompany the original report.

If you wish to continue to submit further information on your problem,
please do the same thing again: send it to debian-bugs@pixar.com, ensuring
that the Subject line starts with "Bug#1801" or "Re: Bug#1801" so that
we can identify it as relating to the same problem.

Please do not reply to the address at the top of this message,
unless you wish to report a problem with the bug-tracking system.

Ian Jackson
(maintainer, debian-bugs)

Ian Jackson / iwj10@thor.cam.ac.uk, with the debian-bugs tracking mechanism

This page last modified 16:13:02 GMT Sat 04 Nov