Needless man files?

Please post any bugs you have found
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trapster
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#16 Post by trapster »

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You are in /root/$ man irssi

Irssi(1)                                                                                                               Irssi(1)

NAME
       Irssi - a modular IRC client for UNIX

SYNOPSIS
       irssi [-dv!?] [-c server] [-p port] [-n nickname] [-w password] [-h hostname]

DESCRIPTION
       Irssi  is  a  modular  Internet  Relay Chat client. It is highly extensible and very secure. Being a fullscreen, termcap
       based client with many features, Irssi is easily extensible through scripts and modules.

OPTIONS
       --config=FILE
              use FILE instead of ~/.irssi/config.

       --home=PATH
              PATH specifies the home directory of Irssi.  Default is ~/.irssi

       -c, --connect=SERVER
              connects to SERVER

       -w, --password=PASSWORD
              use PASSWORD for authentification.

       -p, --port=PORT
              automatically connect to PORT on server.

       -!, --noconnect
              disables autoconnecting.

       -n, --nick=NICKNAME
              specify NICKNAME as your nick.

       -h, --hostname=HOSTNAME
              use HOSTNAME for your irc session.

       -d, --dummy
              use dummy terminal mode.

       -v, --version
              display the version of Irssi.

       -?, --help
              show a help message.

       --usage
              display brief usage message.

SEE ALSO
       Irssi has been supplied with  a  huge  amount  of  documentation.  Check  /help  or  look  at  the  files  contained  by
trapster
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sikpuppy
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#17 Post by sikpuppy »

Yep, that's the man command alright. I don't seem to have it...it's been replaced by a script in /usr/bin that uses a mini browser.

I suggest that your install must have replaced that script with the original implementation of the actual man command (as opposed to a script). My 431 has no add-ons or scripts except that which comes with the actual distro.
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davesurrey
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#18 Post by davesurrey »

FWIW I get exactly the same as sikpuppy when I

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 man irssi
but if firefox is running at that time it is redirected to www.irssi.com and says unable to connect to the site.

This is using ttuuxxx's 431.1

Dave

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8-bit
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#19 Post by 8-bit »

trapster,
Could you check under /usr/bin and see if your man file is a script?
I found that man in Puppy 4.21 and Puppy 4.3.1 scsi kernel 2.6.30.5 are script files.
And they are different.
Maybe zip yours up and attach it for comparision.
What version of Puppy, exactly, are you having this work with?

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alienjeff
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#20 Post by alienjeff »

This innocent thread speaks volumes about what's wrong with Puppy, and underscores both previous critical review and calls for some serious organization.

Of course, organization is against the oft touted Chaos Dev Credo...
[size=84][i]hangout:[/i] ##b0rked on irc.freenode.net
[i]diversion:[/i] [url]http://alienjeff.net[/url] - visit The Fringe
[i]quote:[/i] "The foundation of authority is based upon the consent of the people." - Thomas Hooker[/size]

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8-bit
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#21 Post by 8-bit »

For those of you that might be interested in what changes I made to the /usr/bin/man script copied from Puppy 4.2.1 to get it to recognize and display online man pages
I am giving you the code I changed in the man script file.

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#    exec defaulthtmlviewer http://linux.die.net/man/${1}
	exec defaulthtmlviewer "http://www.google.com/search?&q=man+\"${1}\"+site:linux.die.net&btnI=Search"
The commented code beginning with # is the original line in the man script from Puppy 4.2.1. The added line is from the man script in Puppy 4.3.1 scsi.
So If you copy the man script from Puppy 4.2.1 found in /usr/bin/ to /usr/bin in Puppy 4.3.1 and make that change to the man script,
the man command from a command line should find local man pages and still be able to find online man pages.

diaeresis
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#22 Post by diaeresis »

so is this solved? because if it isn't I will put it on the bug tracker but if it is i will ignore it.

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8-bit
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#23 Post by 8-bit »

In my case, I have the man command working properly from the command line now.
But you have to remember in this that I used the man script from Puppy 4.2.1 and did a modification to it.
So if the original man script remains unchanged, the problem will still exist.
So the best I can tell you is to try typing "man [name of program] from a command line and see if it indeed finds and displays local man pages that are in the man directories.
If you then think it needs to be addressed, go for it.

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trapster
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#24 Post by trapster »

I might have the "smaller" 4.31 version. Can't remember which I downloaded.
/usr/bin/man is not a script. It is an "ELF 32 bit LSB executable intel 80386 version 1 (SYSV)"

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~ > man --help
man, version 1.6e

usage: man [-adfhktwW] [section] [-M path] [-P pager] [-S list]
        [-m system] [-p string] name ...

  a : find all matching entries
  c : do not use cat file
  d : print gobs of debugging information
  D : as for -d, but also display the pages
  f : same as whatis(1)
  h : print this help message
  k : same as apropos(1)
  K : search for a string in all pages
  t : use troff to format pages for printing
  w : print location of man page(s) that would be displayed
      (if no name given: print directories that would be searched)
  W : as for -w, but display filenames only

  C file   : use `file' as configuration file
  M path   : set search path for manual pages to `path'
  P pager  : use program `pager' to display pages
  S list   : colon separated section list
  m system : search for alternate system's man pages
  p string : string tells which preprocessors to run
               e - [n]eqn(1)   p - pic(1)    t - tbl(1)
               g - grap(1)     r - refer(1)  v - vgrind(1)
trapster
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8-bit
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#25 Post by 8-bit »

Thank you Trapster.
That explains why yours works.
The question here is should the replacement for the binary man file written by Barry be replaced by the binary man file?
Is this a matter of size that the binary man file got replaced by a script file or that additional features were added?
I am currently comfortable with my modified man script file.
I was just wondering why the original binary man file was replaced by a script file.

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sikpuppy
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#26 Post by sikpuppy »

8-bit wrote:I was just wondering why the original binary man file was replaced by a script file.
The mind boggles as to why. I can't think of a single good reason. I can think of some fairly ordinary reasons.

I think any script which clobbers such a key system file is unfortunate. The script is a bit of a shambles anyway, I don't really understand why any system file such as "man" would be set up to connect to the internet anyway.

Since man takes it's pages from whatever is on ones system I think perhaps if it always went to the internet, what are the chances that the page it reached would have either out of date, erroneous or even information on features that the program being "man"ed doesn't have yet?

I know why it's there I think. It's so the PET makers can strip the man pages out of their PETs. However, how much room are we talking about?
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thelaptopkiller
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needless man files but not needless man program

#27 Post by thelaptopkiller »

I do a lot of compiling and all of the programs i compile ether 1.puppy does not have a pet for or 2.is compile only
i am a relitive noob so i would like to read the man files.
the script wont let me
i need the man program why its not in the official release i dont know
is there and version of puppy for compilers and does it have man(the program)?


thelaptopkiller
p.s i am working on compiling dslinux
and i love puppy for that task
because of puppy i can compile it on a p3 600mh pc

thank you puppy!!! :wink:

diaeresis
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#28 Post by diaeresis »

If I use man (program name) either in a terminal or in a command prompt I get sent out into internetwebspacethingy by firefox and get a nice helpful web page devoted to whatever program name I typed.
I get the impression that this is not what man users expect to happen.
So as I am sticking stuff on the bug tracker and one more or less makes no odds to me I will whack it in and whoever looks after that side of it all can turn it into a feature request if anyone is unhappy about it being called a bug.
I hope that seems reasonable to all interested parties.
:D
I have a headache and a stinking cold. Subtle nuances are beyond me right now.
And right now I would like a simple easy uncomplicated way of turning a window into exactly half the screen and another window into exactly half the screen and both of them sitting there looking at me while I look at them. And I am sure it is easy but i have never been interested in having it like that before and don't know where to start.

amigo
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#29 Post by amigo »

Puppy usually has all the man-pages removed -which I also think is unfortunate. Some systems have a local method of displaying man-pages as html which does make them easier to read, but has more overhead.

To my way of thinking, all package should come with some essential documentation -including any README files, LICENSE files and any HOWTO or man-pages.

At the very least, Puppy could use a script-version of man, but which would first check to see if the requested man-page is available on the system. if not, then it could go,looking for it online -after cehcking to see if you are online, of course. But that probably makes too much sense to be included in Puppy...

I've recently implemented package-splitting in my src2pkg program, so you can split out docs and man-pages (among other things), but my program goes *way* out of its' way(hundreds of lines of code) to make sure there are essential docs included in the main package.

Jeff -thanks so much for mentioning slitaz so long ago -I finally got around to checking out out and was so pleased to find an orderly distro, an orderly web-site, a complete repo of sources, a group of devs working together to things the right way -AAmaaayzen Gracie!

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technosaurus
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#30 Post by technosaurus »

here is a man pet ... with no man pages lol
Attachments
man-1.6f-i486.pet
(46.23 KiB) Downloaded 472 times
Check out my [url=https://github.com/technosaurus]github repositories[/url]. I may eventually get around to updating my [url=http://bashismal.blogspot.com]blogspot[/url].

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8-bit
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#31 Post by 8-bit »

Technosaurus,

I just downloaded, converted to a tar.gz, and extracted your offering in a working directory.
Upon opening a terminal to get a command line in that directory and trying it, I have found that it indeed does fine the limited man files.
But it also fails at finding .htm or .html help files. It was never designed to do that or to try to look online for help.
So therein is the reason the man script came to be.
The script works with minor modification and that modification also lets it find and display nicely formatted local man pages as well as still being able to handle the htm and html help files and then go online to try to find help for a command or program.
So the man script file was to be an improvement on the man command.
So as to me, I am going to use the script version of man with that one line modification.
I will keep your efforts around though.
Thank you for making it available to those that want it.

amigo
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#32 Post by amigo »

I've been toying with this (man) and texinfo for the last couple of days for my new distro i586-kiss-linux.
The big trouble with man is that it needs groff which is a pretty big package(~8MB). Same deal with texinfo(~7MB)
What I'm going to do is use scripts which will allow other programs to be used as a viewer -whether running from CLI or X. man2html piped through html2txt gets you the equivalent output of froff piped through lesspipe.sh(which is what man does). And man2html alone will obviouls give you suitable output for viewing in a browser. So it's just a matter of writing a script which figures out whether you are running from CLI or X, then whether the asked-for man-page is present and disaplying it, or looking for it on the web if you are connected.

Pretty much the same procedure for info pages -which Puppy also never installs, I think. I hate using info -in fact I have never figured out how to navigate with it! But, using a nicer viewer makes info pages useful to me -and many programs(mostly GNU projects) only install info pages.
I'm setting up to compress all man and info-pages using xz, which saves about 20-25% more space compared to gzip.

For the last several years I have used the coolman program which comes with cooledit as it makes man-pages much easier to read and search for terms. In fact, I created a package which combines coolman with another old GTK1 program for indexing/searching man-pages by category. I called the program RTFM...
You can get it here:
http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/dis ... tfm/0.6.0/

And, I hereby dedicate this program to one of its' chief proponents, AlienJeff!

I may stick with using coolman for KISS, but I'll probably patch it to use man2html insetad of calling groff as it now does.

For viewing info pages, there are several nice programs - pinfo and saxinfo among them, but there is also tkinfo and others.

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technosaurus
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#33 Post by technosaurus »

This is actually what I use as my man script in X

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#! /bin/bash
defaulthtmlviewer "http://www.google.com/search?&q=man+"$1"+site:linux.die.net&btnI=Search"
Check out my [url=https://github.com/technosaurus]github repositories[/url]. I may eventually get around to updating my [url=http://bashismal.blogspot.com]blogspot[/url].

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shinobar
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improved man script

#34 Post by shinobar »

Hi all,
attached improved man script for puppy.
extract the attached and put it as /usr/bin/man.
to look up local man page, you need man2html, which is in devx.

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# man --help
man for puppy linux - 09 Dec 2009
If you like to use original version of man, try '/usr/local/man'.

usage: man [section] name
if you like to use original (binary) man, which is in devx sfs at /usr/bin/man,
get it from /initrd/pup_ro?/usr/bin/man and copy it to /usr/local/man.

this man script is an improved version based on the man in 4.3.1JP(Japanese Edition), basically bilingual and potentially i18n.

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auriza
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#35 Post by auriza »

I just want to share the fact that I know in Puppy 4.3.1:
- man command in Puppy is a script
- it searches for html files in /usr/share/doc and it's subdirectories
(e.g. if you type "man abiword" will open-up a browser showing /usr/share/doc/abiword.html)
- if you want to include manpage in your package, convert it to html with man2html command and place it to /usr/share/doc
- if you want to see those converted html manual page in console, you can edit the man script to change the browser to w3m, elinks, etc

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