Here's a fix suggestion, using the x-to-1 script that is in use in GNU gettext for 5 years.
I'm not sure it's best to add that additional level of infrastructure/indirection to Hello. E.g., it seems unnecessary to have a skeleton when all that is being specified is the one-line description in the [NAME] section, which can be easily done on the command line. Meanwhile, I added the -o to the help2man invocation as Ralf suggested, so hopefully now it won't bomb out if help2man isn't available. Also, why not adding the help2man to build-aux? Sounds good to me, but will Automake find it there? I installed all your other fixes. Thank you very very much. Next pretest coming soon ... Karl