Re: [ITP] italic-man

[Thomas Wolff <towo@towo.net>]

Am 16.02.2023 um 20:17 schrieb Thomas Wolff via Cygwin-apps:
>
> Am 16.02.2023 um 19:59 schrieb Jon Turney:
>> On 21/01/2023 17:04, Thomas Wolff via Cygwin-apps wrote:
>>> italic-man installs two scripts and hooks them into the workflow of 
>>> the 'man' command so that the italic attribute of manual pages is 
>>> actually displayed as italics in terminals that support it.
>>>
>>> cygport file attached
>>
>> Thanks very much for having another go at this.
>>
>> I'm still not overly keen on postinstall/preremove scripts which 
>> modify a configuration file belonging to another package, so I think 
>> I'm going to defer to Achim on approving this.
>>
>> Taking a step back, may I ask a couple of questions?
>>
>> - Can this be done as a patch to man-db and/or groff?
>>
>> (perhaps with a separate man-italic package which just contains a 
>> marker file which enables the functionality?)
>>
>> - (If different) how would this be done in an upstreamable way?
> Thanks for taking a look.
> I understand your hesitation but there are a number of zp_ postinstall 
> scripts around that make updates to mandb, mime db, desktop, various 
> caches, maybe crontab.
> Well, yes, there could be a zp_ script for man that makes this entry 
> to /etc/man_db.conf itself in the presence of the italic-man package. 
> If that's desired and someone else updates man, I will cooperate on this.
> I think the installation of italic-man does this in an upstreamable 
> way except for the postinstall mechanism of course which seems to be 
> different (if existent at all) everywhere.
> Thomas
I've added a zp_man-db-italic.dash postinstall script as a proposal for 
man-db to address your concerns, to be found in the repository 
github.com/mintty/italic-man. However, I find not documentation about 
these zp_ things, it seems they are just all called after each setup. So 
would it actually make a difference whether the zp_ is a script of 
italic-man or of man-db? I've also added a cygport file to the 
repository so you can try the update if you like.
About your first question
> - Can this be done as a patch to man-db and/or groff?
Do you mean the whole thing should not be a separate package at all but 
completely patched into man-db?
Looking forward to your opinion and that of the man-db package maintainer.
And yes, the hook works on Linux too, so it could be provided somehow 
upstream.
Thomas