🚀 go-pugleaf

Before we embark on too annoyingly large a project down here:

Has anyone written a man2texinfo? (I'm actually looking for a
man2info, but that doesn't seem any easier.)

The program I envision would take a man tree (say /usr/man) and make a
top node with a menu that looked like:

* Section 1::
	User commands

* Section 1m::
	Administrative commands (yes, I use HPs).

etc.

Each section node would be a menu of the available man pages, each man
page would be a menu of the .SH sections, each .SH would have the text
in the section and a menu for any .SS sections etc.

Also useful would be an index that functioned like /usr/man/whatis (so
that the i command from Dave Gillespie's info.el (which is what we use)
mimiced apropos).

It would also be nice to introduce a heuristic that attempted to
convert any word in the form ``string(x)'' where ``x'' is a legal
manual section to a cross reference. This could be pretty strong if it
actually checked that the reference existed before making it.



Pointers to programs with only part of this functionality would also
be appreciated. It's sometimes easier to modify someone else's source
than write one's own from scratch.


Finally: does anyone on gnu.misc.discuss have any idea whether it
would violate a copyright if we used this program on the (in our case)
HP supplied man pages in /usr/man?





m.
(sorry for the posting to gnu.utils.bug but I can't find a
gnu.utils.{help,discuss}. )

--

Maneesh Sahani

System Administrator for the Computer Science Undergraduate
Laboratory, Caltech.

maneesh@through.ugcs.caltech.edu

w. (818) 356-6811 (x5062)
h. (818) 356-3171