Re: [bug #59962] Issues in Groff man pages

[Helge Kreutzmann]

Hello Branden,
first of all, apolgies for reporting the other issues twice. I'll
try to check better next time.

On Thu, Jan 28, 2021 at 01:17:22PM -0500, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> > --
> > Man page: soelim.1
> > Issue: The following graphs cannot be processed by po4a. To ease
> translation, please render this directly, avoiding pic.tmac. See bootup(7) for
> an example
> > 
> > "The normal processing sequence of groff is this:"
> 
> Hmmm, it may be desirable to enhance your toolchain, or possibly to
> special-case your project's handling of GNU soelim, since its usage of the pic
> preprocessor in a man page document is, to the best of my knowledge, rare. 
> (However, your project likely has access to better raw data on this issue than
> I do.)
> 
> What I believe should excuse soelim(1) from complaint is that it only uses pic
> if the formatter is in "troff mode"--this is the "t" conditional in troff.  In
> soelim(1) we have in-page logic that boils down to this:
> 
> 
> .if t
> .PS
> .\" pic diagram
> .PE
> .el
> .\" ASCII art alternative
> 
> 
> On further consideration, the quoted strings in the pic document are also
> legitimate strings for localization, so again this may boil down to a
> toolchain issue, because these should be easy to match.  (The fixed sizes of
> the geometric objects surrounding the text could prove troublesome,
> admittedly.  Possibly some sufficiently clever pic-writing could overcome this
> by measuring the strings and sizing the objects to fit them.)
> 
> In my view, having a fallback/alternative for nroff devices is not only the
> right thing to do for accessibility purposes, but it should be showing up as
> localizable text.
> 
> Can you share any insight on these matters?

I put Mario, who maintins manpages-l10n into the loop, he experienced
with varying the toolchain to include the strings for localization.

Greetings

        Helge

-- 
      Dr. Helge Kreutzmann                     debian@helgefjell.de
           Dipl.-Phys.                   http://www.helgefjell.de/debian.php
        64bit GNU powered                     gpg signed mail preferred
           Help keep free software "libre": http://www.ffii.de/

signature.asc
Description: PGP signature