Package: man-db Version: 2.5.0-3 Severity: normal man-db has excessively rigid logic on when to save cat pages with respect to locale configuration. It will only save cat pages if the current locale's character set matches the "standard output encoding" for the current manual hierarchy. This means that UTF-8 locales tend not to work well (except for pages in *.UTF-8 directories), and nor do locale configurations using different character sets in different locale categories.
I think it would be reasonable to save the cat page in the appropriate encoding for the directory, but to recode to the current locale's character set at display time. There would then be no need for this restriction in most cases. There is still a wart with regard to English-language manual pages, which can't easily be in directories tagged with an explicit character set. So, perhaps a better answer would be to save all cat pages as UTF-8 by default and rely on manconv to provide backward compatibility for old cat pages in legacy encodings. This might be more reliable and comprehensible in the long term. -- Colin Watson [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
