* Rafael Laboissiere <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2005-04-12 12:16]:
> In PDL::Reduce.pm.gz there are many instances of:
>
> \f(CW\*(C`reduce\*(C'\fR
>
> which seems to be a perfectly acceptable nroff construct.
>
> The whatis program seems to scan the "NAME" section of man pages and display
> the contents. However, whatis seems to do some kind of parsing also, by
> removing the "\f(CW" and "\fR" as above.
>
> My question is: wouldn't it be simpler to fix the whatis program in the
> man-db package, such that the construct above is correctly parsed and
> produces something like:
>
> $ whatis PDL::Reduce
> PDL::Reduce (3pm) - - a "reduce" function for PDL
>
> ?
>
> I am Cc:ing this message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
I investigated the issue a little further. the "\*(C`" and "\*(C'" escape
sequences are defined in the preamble of man pages generated by Pod::Man as
string sequences:
.ds C` ""
.ds C' ""
The whatis program just reads the synopsis lines extracted by the mandb
program and stored in /var/cache/man/index.db. The mandb program would
have to be changed in order to cope with the .ds definitions above. I
guess that this is a not-so-trivial problem.
--
Rafael
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