Package: a2ps
Version: 1:4.13b-5
Severity: normal
Problem: while browsing utils in 'dwww', I read about 'pdiff', did a
test run, and was surprised that it sent four pages of output to the
printer. Luckily the printer was off.
Cause of surprise: vague docs.
Details:
% whatis pdiff
pdiff (1) - produce a pretty comparison between files
The verb 'produce' does not clearly distinguish that output goes
to the printer.
The man page says:
% man pdiff | grep -nA 2 DESC
Reformatting pdiff(1), please wait...
11:DESCRIPTION
12- Pretty print the differences between FILE1 and FILE2.
13-
The verb 'print' may mean "send to standard output". It's common
usage, as per these descriptions of common utils, none of which
require a printer:
% whatis wc whoami uname seq
wc (1) - print the number of newlines, words, and bytes in
files
whoami (1) - print effective userid
uname (1) - print system information
seq (1) - print a sequence of numbers
The 'pdiff' man page refers the user to a more thorough info page, but
that info page has only the same text as the man page, right down to
needlessly referring to a more thorough info page.
The command line help is also the same text as the man page description:
% pdiff --help | head -n 2
Usage: pdiff FILE1 FILE2 [-- A2PS-OPTIONS...]
Pretty print the differences between FILE1 and FILE2.
Hope this helps...
-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
APT prefers unstable
APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.12-1-686
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C (charmap=ANSI_X3.4-1968) (ignored: LC_ALL set to C)
Versions of packages a2ps depends on:
ii libc6 2.3.5-6 GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
ii libpaper1 1.1.14-3 Library for handling paper charact
Versions of packages a2ps recommends:
ii bzip2 1.0.2-10 high-quality block-sorting file co
ii cupsys-bsd [lpr] 1.1.23-12 Common UNIX Printing System(tm) -
ii cupsys-client 1.1.23-12 Common UNIX Printing System(tm) -
ii psutils 1.17-19 A collection of PostScript documen
ii wdiff 0.5-16 Compares two files word by word
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