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Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic)

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  Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic) Richard Owlett <rowlett@cloud85.net> - 2020-05-30 12:00 +0200
    Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic) <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2020-05-30 13:00 +0200
      Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic) Richard Owlett <rowlett@cloud85.net> - 2020-05-30 15:40 +0200
    Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic) Richard Owlett <rowlett@cloud85.net> - 2020-05-30 15:50 +0200
      Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic) The Wanderer <wanderer@fastmail.fm> - 2020-05-30 16:20 +0200
    Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic) l0f4r0@tuta.io - 2020-05-30 16:20 +0200
      Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic) <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2020-05-30 17:00 +0200
        Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic) Richard Owlett <rowlett@cloud85.net> - 2020-05-30 17:10 +0200
          Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic) David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2020-05-30 23:10 +0200
            Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic) Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> - 2020-06-01 09:00 +0200
            Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic) Richard Owlett <rowlett@cloud85.net> - 2020-06-02 13:20 +0200
              Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic) Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2020-06-02 16:40 +0200
              Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic) David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2020-06-02 17:10 +0200
    Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic) Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> - 2020-05-30 16:50 +0200
    Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic) Ralph Katz <ralph@ralphkatz.com> - 2020-06-01 23:20 +0200
      Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic) Richard Owlett <rowlett@cloud85.net> - 2020-06-02 00:10 +0200
        Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic) Bob Weber <bobrweber@gmail.com> - 2020-06-02 00:30 +0200
        Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic) l0f4r0@tuta.io - 2020-06-02 01:00 +0200
        Something is buggy - was [Re: Debian man pages have annoying  feature(sic)] Richard Owlett <rowlett@cloud85.net> - 2020-06-02 15:10 +0200
          Re: Something is buggy - was [Re: Debian man pages have annoying  feature(sic)] The Wanderer <wanderer@fastmail.fm> - 2020-06-02 15:50 +0200
            Re: Something is buggy - was [Re: Debian man pages have annoying  feature(sic)] Richard Owlett <rowlett@cloud85.net> - 2020-06-02 17:50 +0200
              Re: Something is buggy - was [Re: Debian man pages have annoying  feature(sic)] Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> - 2020-06-03 07:30 +0200
          Re: Something is buggy - was [Re: Debian man pages have annoying  feature(sic)] l0f4r0@tuta.io - 2020-06-02 16:30 +0200
    [CLARIFICATION] Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic) Richard Owlett <rowlett@cloud85.net> - 2020-06-02 12:40 +0200
      Re: [CLARIFICATION] Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic) Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> - 2020-06-02 14:40 +0200
    Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic) Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> - 2020-06-02 16:40 +0200

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#223023 — Re: Something is buggy - was [Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic)]

On 06/02/2020 08:45 AM, The Wanderer wrote:
> On 2020-06-02 at 09:05, Richard Owlett wrote:
> 
>> On 06/01/2020 05:02 PM, Richard Owlett wrote:
>>
>>> On 06/01/2020 04:02 PM, Ralph Katz wrote:
> 
>>>> apt show debian-goodies
>>>> ...
>>>> debman     - Easily view man pages from a binary .deb without extracting
>>>>                  [man, apt* (via debget)]
>>>>
>>>> So...  ~$ dman packagename   # will fetch the manpages as though they
>>>> were local.
>>>>
>>>> Regards,
>>>> Ralph
>>>
>>>
>>> Thank you. Looks interesting.
>>> 1st didn't work even after installing debian-goodies.
>>> Suspect operator. Leaving now. will pursue in morning.
> 
>> Copy and paste this morning from MATE terminal
>>> richard@defaultinstall:~$ dman gforth
>>> bash: dman: command not found
>>> richard@defaultinstall:~$ debman gforth
>>> Usage: debman [options] [-- man(1) options] <man page name> ...
>>>
>>> Options should be exactly one of:
>>>          -f package.deb          read pages from package.deb archive
>>>          -p package              download .deb for package and read pages
>>>                                  from there
>>> richard@defaultinstall:~$ debman -p gforth
>>> Usage: debman [options] [-- man(1) options] <man page name> ...
>>>
>>> Options should be exactly one of:
>>>          -f package.deb          read pages from package.deb archive
>>>          -p package              download .deb for package and read pages
>>>                                  from there
>>> richard@defaultinstall:~$ debman -f gforth.deb
>>> Usage: debman [options] [-- man(1) options] <man page name> ...
>>>
>>> Options should be exactly one of:
>>>          -f package.deb          read pages from package.deb archive
>>>          -p package              download .deb for package and read pages
>>>                                  from there
>>> richard@defaultinstall:~$
>>
>> I have verified that both
>> https://manpages.debian.org/stretch/gforth/gforth.1.en.html
>>     and
>> https://manpages.debian.org/buster/gforth/gforth.1.en.html
>>
>> Help please.
> 
> I've dug into this, and while I thought at first there was a bug here
> myself, I've figured it out.
> 
> The command lines you're giving are specifying the package name, but not
> the name of the man page. The "<man page name>" argument at the end of
> the usage section is not optional.
> 
> For example,
> 
> $ debman -p gforth vmgen
> 
> works fine for me.

For what I was trying to do, I should have written
   debman -p gforth gforth
instead of
   debman -p gforth

My problem with dman revolves around running Stretch and debian.org 
defaulting to serving up information about "stable" {i.e. Buster}.

My bandwidth constraints cause me to purchase DVD sets to upgrade. And 
this time I had to purchase a flash drive instead instead of physical 
DVDs. The intended target machine cannot boot from a flash drive so I 
got delayed by housekeeping chores.

More later.
Thank you.

> 
> If you need to find out the name of the actual man page (since, e.g., it
> isn't intuitively obvious that gforth will contain a man page for the
> name 'vmgen'), something like
> 
> $ apt-file show gforth | grep /man/
> 
> ought to do it; just drop the leading path (up through the final '/')
> and the trailing ".X.gz" (where X is a number) from each filename, and
> it should be a valid man-page argument to debman.
> 
> (I'm not sure what it will do if there's a package which installs two
> man pages with the same name but different sections, because I haven't
> yet found any examples of packages which do that.)
> 

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#223027 — Re: Something is buggy - was [Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic)]

[Multipart message — attachments visible in raw view] — view raw

On Ma, 02 iun 20, 10:48:45, Richard Owlett wrote:
> 
> My problem with dman revolves around running Stretch and debian.org
> defaulting to serving up information about "stable" {i.e. Buster}.

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=931992

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser

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#223013 — Re: Something is buggy - was [Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic)]

Hi,

2 juin 2020 à 15:05 de rowlett@cloud85.net:

> On 06/01/2020 05:02 PM, Richard Owlett wrote:
>
> I am running Debian 9.8 with MATE desktop
>
> Synaptic reports:
>
>> Commit Log for Mon Jun  1 16:45:47 2020
>> Installed the following packages:
>> curl (7.52.1-5+deb9u9)
>> dctrl-tools (2.24-2+b1)
>> debian-goodies (0.69.1)
>> libcurl3 (7.52.1-5+deb9u9)
>>
>
> Copy and paste this morning from MATE terminal
>
>> richard@defaultinstall:~$ dman gforth
>> bash: dman: command not found
>> richard@defaultinstall:~$ debman gforth
>> Usage: debman [options] [-- man(1) options] <man page name> ...
>>
>> Options should be exactly one of:
>> -f package.deb          read pages from package.deb archive
>> -p package              download .deb for package and read pages
>> from there
>> richard@defaultinstall:~$ debman -p gforth
>> Usage: debman [options] [-- man(1) options] <man page name> ...
>>
>> Options should be exactly one of:
>> -f package.deb          read pages from package.deb archive
>> -p package              download .deb for package and read pages
>> from there
>> richard@defaultinstall:~$ debman -f gforth.deb
>> Usage: debman [options] [-- man(1) options] <man page name> ...
>>
>> Options should be exactly one of:
>> -f package.deb          read pages from package.deb archive
>> -p package              download .deb for package and read pages
>> from there
>>
> richard@defaultinstall:~$ 
> I have verified that both
> https://manpages.debian.org/stretch/gforth/gforth.1.en.html
> and
> https://manpages.debian.org/buster/gforth/gforth.1.en.html
>
Surely you did that but you haven't read previous answers on this mailing-list though otherwise you would not have said it is "buggy"...

Regarding dman it seems normal since your debian-goodies version is really old (0.69.1).
Indeed, dman seems to have been included from debian-goodies v0.70:

debian-goodies (0.70) experimental; urgency=low

  [ Antoine Beaupré ]
  * Add dman script from Ubuntu, modified to fetch pages directly from
    manpages.debian.org, see https://github.com/Debian/debiman/issues/57
    (Closes: #860920)

  [ Axel Beckert ]
  * Fix missing close statement in checkrestart. (c.f. #855554)
    Thanks Emilio Pozuelo Monfort!
  * Suggest lsb-release for new dman command.

-- Axel Beckert <abe@debian.org>  Sat, 22 Apr 2017 01:22:31 +0200

Best regards,
l0f4r0

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#223002 — [CLARIFICATION] Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic)

In a recent post a particular package was mentioned.
I was not familiar with it.
I went to appropriate URL under https://manpages.debian.org/buster .

It did not explicitly answer my question.
However, under "SEE ALSO" it stated that additional documentation would 
be under /usr/share/doc/...  .

*PROBLEM*
As package is not installed, that directory does *NOT* exist.

Where to find referenced documentation on the web?

NOTE BENE
This post is about man pages as a class.

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#223006 — Re: [CLARIFICATION] Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic)

Richard Owlett wrote: 
> In a recent post a particular package was mentioned.
> I was not familiar with it.
> I went to appropriate URL under https://manpages.debian.org/buster .
> 
> It did not explicitly answer my question.
> However, under "SEE ALSO" it stated that additional documentation would be
> under /usr/share/doc/...  .
> 
> *PROBLEM*
> As package is not installed, that directory does *NOT* exist.

*ANSWER*

Option 1: Install the package. Now the docs are in
/usr/share/doc/PACKAGENAME

Option 2: Get the package (apt install -d will work, or acquire
it from the package web page) and uncompress it with ar in a
location of your choosing; then read the docs.

There may be other options, but each of these will work.

-dsr-

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#223014

Richard Owlett <rowlett@cloud85.net> writes:

> I the recent thread about returning a Debian installation to its
> original state "popularity-contest" was mentioned.
>
> I wished to compare it to other tools mentioned in that thread.
> Obvious stating point -- read the man page.
> As I never installed its package I went to
> https://manpages.debian.org/buster/popularity-contest/popularity-contest.8.en.html
> .
>
> It did not explicitly answer my question.
> However, under "SEE ALSO" it stated:
>> Additional documentation is in /usr/share/doc/popularity-contest/.
>
> *PROBLEM*
> As package is not installed, that directory does *NOT* exist.
>
> Where to find required documentation on the web?
>
> NOTE BENE
> This post is about man pages as a class.

Asking for a man page to include all of the documentation about a
package isn't reasonable -- there are man pages like that (bash comes to
mind), and it isn't a page, it's a book.  A man page tries to be a
succinct summary, so someone can look up details about running a program,
or about a file format, in a hurry.

If you want the full documentation on something you haven't installed,
the man page is the wrong place to look.  Googling 'debian
popularity-contest' (instead of looking specifically for the man page)
points me to
https://salsa.debian.org/popularity-contest-team/popularity-contest#:~:text=The%20popularity%2Dcontest%20package%20sets,go%20on%20the%20first%20CD.
which has a wealth of information.

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