[lug] man page creation

D. Stimits stimits at idcomm.com
Thu Nov 30 13:45:33 MST 2000


Chris Riddoch wrote:
> 
> "D. Stimits" <stimits at idcomm.com> writes:
> 
> > I was asked about the creation of man pages based on html pages. I know
> > there are a lot of conversion utilities out there, and found several for
> > going the reverse route and creating html from man pages. In terms of
> > going TO man pages, I found references to a number of conversions, such
> > as latex to man, and the docbook sgml type conversions, but no html.
> >
> > Does anyone here know of a converter from html to create a new man page?
> >
> > D. Stimits, stimits at idcomm.com
> 
> The problem is, HTML (despite its similarity to other SGML-based
> things) describes layout and appearance instead of structure.  You
> can't trust that everything that's italic is a reference or a term, or
> that anything in fixed-width font is a command line.
> 
> If you just want to get the superficial appearance of the manpage
> copied to manpage format, I suppose it wouldn't be impossible to write
> a converter in perl or python.  Maybe somebody's done it, I've
> personally not seen such a beast.
> 
> If it were me, though, and it weren't very many HTML pages I was
> interested in converting, I'd probably take the HTML page into $EDITOR
> and turn it into a Docbook RefEntry by hand, and use the SGML tools to
> generate the manpage.  If you're interested in doing that, I can give
> you a few pointers off the list.
> 
> Better to author in something that tells you about the structure of
> the language than to try to convert from one layout-description to
> another, in my humble opinion.  So if your goal is just to make
> manpages in the first place, instead of having existing HTML pages to
> mess with, it's better to use the LaTeX or Docbook systems.
> 
> </rant>
> 
> --
> Chris Riddoch
> socket at peakpeak.com

I'm checking with the person that requested the conversions. I may go
for the LaTeX or Docbook versions, but it will be up to her since she
will be the end maintainer. I probably won't know for another day.

D. Stimits, stimits at idcomm.com




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