Package: wnpp Severity: wishlist Owner: "Paul Hardy" <unifoun...@unifoundry.com> Version: 0.02 Upstream Author: Nelson Beebe URL: http://ftp.math.utah.edu/pub/man2texi/ License: GPL2+, GFDL1.3+ Programming Lang: Bourne shell, awk, sed Description: man page to texinfo file converter
Debian packages require man pages, GNU packages require texinfo files, and never the twain shall meet...until now. The man2texi package can convert single man pages to texinfo files, or convert multiple man pages to texinfo files in a batch mode. The upstream author, Professor Nelson Beebe of the University of Utah, is very active in the TeX and GNU communities. He wrote an earlier version of this converter, man2texi version 0.01, over a decade ago. Someone else with the GNU Project and I have further modified that package. I am working in cooperation with Professor Beebe to produce a version 0.02 with these modifications. We expect this to be done shortly. "When it is ready" (to coin a phrase), I intend to package it for Debian. The package consists mainly of: a Bourne-type shell script (which will be installed as /usr/bin/man2texi), an awk script and a sed script that will be installed in /usr/share/man2texi/, and a man2texi.1.gz man page. Although the version number is low, this package performs a batch conversion on all of the man pages in my Unifont package with one command, producing perfect texinfo output. The GNU (and Debian) autogen package already has a file named man2texi, but it is buried in the autogen directory and will not cause any conflict. It does not have a man page either, so there will be no conflict with the man2texi man page. I have been in contact with the Debian Developer who maintains autogen, Andreas Metzler, about this. There is one usage quirk with this package: the sed script will convert man pages containing ISO-8859-1 (Latin 1) characters, not UTF-8 characters. Because of this, I run the command by setting "LC_ALL=C". I do not think this is a show stopper, as this environment variable can be set on a command line in a Makefile, and this usage is documented in the man2texi man page. The package is small and simple, so it should not take long to review once ready. I am hoping to get it into Testing before the upcoming freeze. Paul Hardy GNU Unifont Maintainer
