From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from smtp-1.sys.kth.se (smtp-1.sys.kth.se [130.237.32.175]) by krisdoz.my.domain (8.14.3/8.14.3) with ESMTP id o6QEx0VZ003890 for ; Mon, 26 Jul 2010 10:59:00 -0400 (EDT) Received: from smtp-1.sys.kth.se (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by smtp-1.sys.kth.se (Postfix) with ESMTP id 997C61563B6 for ; Mon, 26 Jul 2010 16:58:54 +0200 (CEST) X-Virus-Scanned: by amavisd-new at kth.se Received: from smtp-1.sys.kth.se ([127.0.0.1]) by smtp-1.sys.kth.se (smtp-1.sys.kth.se [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with LMTP id vu9d5gYEKLek for ; Mon, 26 Jul 2010 16:58:53 +0200 (CEST) X-KTH-Auth: kristaps [130.237.221.96] X-KTH-mail-from: kristaps@bsd.lv X-KTH-rcpt-to: discuss@mdocml.bsd.lv Received: from [130.237.221.96] (ctime.pdc.kth.se [130.237.221.96]) by smtp-1.sys.kth.se (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8FE2D1563C2 for ; Mon, 26 Jul 2010 16:58:52 +0200 (CEST) Message-ID: <4C4DA22A.9020905@bsd.lv> Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2010 16:56:42 +0200 From: Kristaps Dzonsons User-Agent: Mozilla-Thunderbird 2.0.0.22 (X11/20090707) X-Mailinglist: mdocml-discuss Reply-To: discuss@mdocml.bsd.lv MIME-Version: 1.0 To: discuss@mdocml.bsd.lv Subject: Re: Opinions on .Dd? References: <4C4BBDE5.8020901@online.de> <20100725062509.GA22919@iris.usta.de> <4C4C292C.9020500@online.de> <4C4D90CA.8010607@bsd.lv> <20100726145018.GD24722@bramka.kerhand.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <20100726145018.GD24722@bramka.kerhand.co.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit >> Second thought: a manual date is in general ambiguous. What does it >> mean? Last edit time? Last checkin? And what does it matter, >> considering it usually can't be corroborated with corresponding binary >> (or whatever)? >> > > yes, one of the original problems was that you could never be sure what > the date related to. some said it was for when the page was created > (which i felt was useless), others that it got bumped only on > "significant" updates, and so on. > >> So I dug around and found that `Dd' accepts no arguments. It prints >> "Epoch" in place of a date (wtf?). I think an empty `Dd' is less >> ambiguous than a bogus date. (I'm now committing a fix to the effect >> that `Dd' can be empty.) >> > > what do you mean it accepts no arguments? it accepts the date. and does > it really print "Epoch"? i thought if you messed the date up it just > printed the current date. maybe i am wrong about that though. Yes: % cat foo.3 .Dd .Dt FOO 1 .Os .Sh NAME .Nm foo .Nd bar .Sh DESCRIPTION Moo. % nroff -mandoc foo.3 FOO(1) BSD General Commands Manual FOO(1) NAME foo - bar DESCRIPTION Moo. BSD Epoch BSD (Note groff output chopped, as they don't have our awesome -Owidth argument.) This is on GNU/Linux (groff 1.18.1). I also tested on OpenBSD and NetBSD. Same. If you enter an invalid string, say, `.Dd urgle', then you get the current date. > even so, i think it would be great to print "Epoch". there is no > difference between "Epoch" and "", except a little humour. I actually think it's a bug. What I was getting at, regarding (e.g.) DFBSD and what to put in the `Dd' field, is maybe they're best off leaving it blank. >> I'm happy with putting some notes to the extent of "Usage of the `Dd' >> field is usually one of convention" and listing that OpenBSD exclusively >> uses $Mdocdate$, whilst a general-purpose manual should use a hard-coded >> or empty date. >> >> Thoughts? >> > > this ties in with how do we handle OS differences... different pages, or > a single page which notes differences. the latter might seem sane, but > it could make the page unwieldy. Single page, I think. Are there really so many differences? Thanks, Kristaps -- To unsubscribe send an email to discuss+unsubscribe@mdocml.bsd.lv