Package: man-db Version: 2.5.2-3 Severity: normal As you already know, man uses 'col -b -p -x' in its pipeline when piping the man page to a child process, unless $MAN_KEEP_FORMATTING is specified, and col doesn't handle UTF-8 properly. Because of this, some man pages are invalid UTF-8 by the time they're done being handled, such as "man xterm | iconv". However, even if -b isn't passed to col, it reorders things so that each character is immediately followed by the backspace that erases it, if any - so, "abc^H^H^Hxyz" becomes "a^Hxb^Hyc^Hz". I'd like to suggest that we use this to fix the problem, by changing the ending of the pipeline from '| col -b -p -x' to '| col -p -x | sed -e "s/^\x08*//" -e "s/.\x08//g"'. I don't think this would ever be likely to be accepted upstream, since it depends on (I think?) an implementation detail of 'col', but since we have a col that doesn't support multibyte, but rearranges the text to be easily postprocessed, and a sed that does support multibyte, this seems like a quick-and-dirty way to fix the problem.
-- System Information: Debian Release: lenny/sid APT prefers unstable APT policy: (500, 'unstable') Architecture: i386 (i686) Kernel: Linux 2.6.27.5-20081107-min (SMP w/2 CPU cores) Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash Versions of packages man-db depends on: ii bsdmainutils 6.1.10 collection of more utilities from ii debconf [debconf-2.0] 1.5.24 Debian configuration management sy ii dpkg 1.14.22 Debian package management system ii groff-base 1.18.1.1-21 GNU troff text-formatting system ( ii libc6 2.7-16 GNU C Library: Shared libraries ii libgdbm3 1.8.3-4 GNU dbm database routines (runtime ii zlib1g 1:1.2.3.3.dfsg-12 compression library - runtime man-db recommends no packages. Versions of packages man-db suggests: ii epiphany-gecko [www-browser] 2.22.3-6 Intuitive GNOME web browser - Geck pn groff <none> (no description available) ii iceweasel [www-browser] 3.0.3-3 lightweight web browser based on M ii less 418-1 Pager program similar to more ii w3m [www-browser] 0.5.2-2+b1 WWW browsable pager with excellent -- debconf information: man-db/install-setuid: false -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
