Re: [PATCH 0/2] newlib/libc/time/strftime: table format fix man, tbl, groff multi-page table issues

[Jon Turney <jon.turney@dronecode.org.uk>]

On 20/02/2023 23:20, Brian Inglis wrote:
> On 2023-02-20 15:03, Jon Turney wrote:
>> On 20/02/2023 20:25, Brian Inglis wrote:
>>> On 2023-02-20 02:45, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
>>>> Hi Brian,
>>>>
>>>> On Feb 17 13:49, Brian Inglis wrote:
>>>>> Brian Inglis (2):
>>>>>    newlib/libc/time/strftime.c: split table of conversion
>>>>>      specifiers to fix man, tbl, groff multi-page table issues
>>>>>    newlib/libc/Makefile.inc: sed fix strftime.3 table format
>>>>>      man, tbl, groff multi-page issues
>>>>>
>>>>>   newlib/libc/time/strftime.c | 3 ++-
>>>>>   newlib/libc/Makefile.inc    | 1 +
>>>>>   2 files changed, 3 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
>>>>>
>>>>> -- 
>>>>> 2.39.0
>>>>
>>>> Would you mind terribly to add more text to the commit messages?
>>>> explaining the problem, and its fix?  Just the subject line is quite
>>>> terse.
>>>>
>>>> For patch 1, why adding the split and what's the desired effect.  For
>>>> patch 2, what problem is the sed call fixing and what is the sed
>>>> expression doing?
>>>
>>> Thanks Corinna, You're right - will redo all v3.
>>
>> You should also describe why this must be fixed in this ad-hoc fasion, 
>> rather than in the chew markup or makedocbook.
> 
> I'll also ref the discussion with Branden, following comments from 
> linux-man,
> the newlib man generation by docbook2man is incompatible with how man is 
> incompatible with groff/tbl/grohtml:
> 
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-groff/2023-02/msg00118.html

Thanks, interesting reading.

> via makedocbook python script which generates xml (attached), then
> docbook generates html, man pages, PDFs, texinfo, and the latter
> generate libc info.]

This statement of yours is incorrect:

The embedded documentation is processed ('chewed') by makedoc into 
texinfo, from which html, info and PDFs are generated.

The embedded documentation is also processed by makedocbook into docbook 
from which manpages are generated.

Whatever you think of docbook as a pivot format for generating the 
manpages, texinfo is much worse.

In theory you could use makedocbook as a starting point for directly 
outputting groff manpages, if that's the only way to generate manpages 
of the quality desired.

> I dug and could not find a good point to alter generation of tables > 
> page size that may not adversely affect other [newlib] doc man page 
> tables, where the problem occurs solely on that strftime.3 man page!

These seem like generic problem in the docbook2man XSLT, which should be 
fixed there.