[tex-live] texdoc doesn't find man pages

[Manuel Pégourié-Gonnard]

Werner LEMBERG scripsit (15.07.2008 07:30)
> It should be easy to make this dependent on the existence of a roff
> program.
> 
Of course it is easy.  The question is: is it a good thing to do?  I'm still
unsure on this point.

>> Moreover, texdoc currently searches only in the texmf trees: man
>> pages may not be in texmf trees on some installations.
> 
> Sorry for being imprecise: I was talking about the man pages within
> TeXLive:
> 
>   texmf/doc/man/man1/mptopdf.1
> 
No, I was imprecise.  I understood which man pages you were talking about, but
my point was that, in re-packaged TeX Live's as distributed by Linux distros,
those man pages will end up out of texmf (eg in /usr/share/man/man1).  So
texdoc's behaviour wrt man pages will be different on a vanilla TeX Live and a
 repackaged TeX Live on Linux, and still different on windows.  Do we really
want this?

OTOH, it's true that when texdoc can't find man pages, they can be found by
man.  Well.

>>   I don't think it's worth introducing new system-dependant things
>> in texdoc when man does a good job at finding man pages.
> 
> Well, the man-path to the TeXLive man pages is not always set.

Why not just set it?  You need to set $PATH anyway, so...

> I see to possibilities: Either provide preconverted *.txt files within
> TeXLive (which is probably best -- I can provide those files) or add
> a man2xxx converter to TeXLive.
> 
This could be a good idea, esp. the second (I don't like very much the idea of
duplicating things with .1 and .txt).  Anyway, it would be good to find a
solution for poor windows users who can't access man pages.  If this allows
texdoc to use man pages too, it's great.

Manuel.