Cygwin needs a man-db port (was: How does Cygwin handle non-Latin1 man pages? (move to UTF-8?))

[Erwin Waterlander]

Hi,

The major linux distributions have switched for their man system to 
'man-db' (http://man-db.nongnu.org/) in favour of the classic man.

I think that Cygwin should also switch to man-db. man-db is much better 
in handling man pages in different encoding.

Before man-db, libpipeline (http://libpipeline.nongnu.org/) needs to be 
ported, because man-db uses it.

I have tried to port man-db to Cygwin, but I did not succeed. I got 
stuck in libpipeline. Did anyone else succeed?

regards,

Erwin

Op 25-9-2013 22:04 Erwin Waterlander schreef:
> Erwin Waterlander schreef, Op 25-9-2013 21:50:
>>
>> Erwin Waterlander schreef, Op 24-9-2013 22:01:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> As far as I see it, on Cygwin it is assumed that man pages are 
>>> encoded in Latin-1 (ISO-8859-1).
>>> For instance the man pages of vim.
>>>
>>> /usr/share/man/fr/vim.1.gz is encoded in Latin-1.
>>>
>>> $ export LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8
>>> $ man vim
>>>
>>> This will show the French man page correctly. Latin-1 is converted 
>>> to UTF-8.
>>>
>>> For the Russian translation of the vim manual I see two files:
>>> /usr/share/man/ru.UTF-8/man1/vim.1.gz
>>> /usr/share/man/ru.KOI8-R/man1/vim.1.gz
>>>
>>>
>>> When I type
>>> $ export LANG=ru_RU.UTF-8
>>> $ man vim
>>>
>>> I get the English man page, instead of the Russian man page.
>>> I think because there is no /usr/share/man/ru/man1/vim.1.gz present.
>>>
>>
>> The problem is here that man looks for the manual in these 
>> directories in this order:
>> /usr/share/man/ru_RU.UTF-8
>> /usr/share/man/ru_RU
>> /usr/share/man/ru
>>
>> All three paths are not present on Cygwin.
>> I could set LANG to ru.UTF-8, but this is not common practice. 
>> Normally you set LANG to ru_RU.UTF-8. Therefore I think that the 
>> non-Latin1 folders under /usr/share/man have the wrong name.
>> When I set LANG to ru.UTF-8, man finds the Russian man page, but 
>> displays it wrongly. Even when I fix the NROFF line in /etc/man.conf.
>> Moving /usr/share/man/ru.UTF-8 to /usr/share/man/ru_RU.UTF-8 (and 
>> fixing man.conf) makes the man page display properly. This confirms 
>> that the non-latin1 directories have the wrong name in Cygwin.
>>
>>> When I type
>>>
>>> $ export LANG=ru_RU.UTF-8
>>> $ export LANGUAGE=ru.UTF-8
>>> $ man vim
>>>
>>> The Russian man page is displayed, but all Russian characters are 
>>> wrongly displayed.
>>> I think because it is assumed the man page is in Latin-1.
>>>
>>> To get a correct display of the Russian man page I need to change 
>>> /etc/man.config
>>> I change the line with NROFF to:
>>> NROFF         /usr/bin/preconv | /usr/bin/nroff -c -mandoc 2>/dev/null
>>>
>>> Now the Russian man page displays correctly, but now all the Latin-1 
>>> pages display wrongly.
>>
>> This can be fixed by adding a coding tag to the first or second line 
>> of the man page, which is understood by preconv.
>> When I set LANG to fr_FR.UTF-8, move /usr/share/man/fr.UTF-8 to 
>> /usr/share/man/fr_FR.UTF-8, and add this tag to vim.1
>>
>> .\" -*- coding: latin-1; -*-
>>
>> The French manual displays properly.
>
> Actually this is not working. Somewhere the coding tag is lost, 
> although preconv seems to do a good job. I reported this three years 
> ago to the maintainers of man an groff, but it appears it is still not 
> fixed.
>
>>
>>
>>>
>>> So I undo my change in /etc/man.conf
>>>
>>>
>>> On Linux the trend is to convert all man pages to UTF-8 encoding.
>>> Will Cygwin follow this trend?
>>>
>>>
>>
>> The following needs to be done in Cygwin to have man pages for all 
>> scripts displayed properly out of the box (assuming an UTF-8 locale 
>> and use of mintty):
>>
>> * Rename the non-latin1 directories under /usr/share/man/ to 
>> fr_FR.UTF-8, ru_RU.UTF-8, and so on.
>> * Change /etc/man.conf to use preconv:
>> NROFF         /usr/bin/preconv | /usr/bin/nroff -c -mandoc 2>/dev/null
>> * Convert all Latin-1 coded man pages to UTF-8, or add a latin-1 
>> coding tag on the first line 
>
> Since the coding tag is not working it is best to convert all man 
> pages to UTF-8.
>


-- 
Erwin Waterlander
http://waterlan.home.xs4all.nl/


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