Re: Generating 'cat' pages on make install

[Bob Proulx]

Jason Curl wrote:
> Continuing with my efforts of making a library designed for Linux a bit 
> usable for colleagues on Windows I'd like to figure out how to install 
> "cat" pages, i.e. conversions of "man" pages.

Hmm...  Would it make more sense to set up 'man' on ms-windows for
your colleagues such that it would generate the man pages correctly?
I would think that would be easier.

The problem is that the location and formating of the man-cat pages is
different everywhere.  Different 'man' systems do different things
with with them because 'man' is not standardized on every system.  The
man-cat pages are cache for the 'man' program and different 'man'
programs have made different choices.

Additionally the terminal column width is a terminal specific
difference that even on the same system with the same user there might
be two different formattings.  This can be mitigated by
forcing/assuming a standard 80-character wide terminal though.

> I can write a script that will do the conversion for me, but I'd ideally 
> like to have a rule that will convert the 'man' page for me to 'cat' in 
> the correct directory when installing.

Unfortunately there is no one "correct" directory.

Personally I would look into teaching them to use man on windows to
view the man pages.  That seems to me like it would be the easier
approach.  And then it would be all set up for other Unix-derived
commands in the future.

Even better for GNU-derived software would be to set up the info pages
so that the info documentation would be available.  For the GNU
project info documentation is the usually is the preferred
documentation format.

Bob