[tex-live] typos in man pages

David M. Jones dmj at ams.org
Mon Aug 11 22:43:45 CEST 2008


Hi, Karl,

I understand and agree that this isn't the time to undertake a major
overhaul, but would it be possible to remove this paragraph?

       AmSTeX is the official typesetting system of the American
       Mathematical Society, and nearly all of its publications are
       typeset using AmSTeX.  The online version of AMS Math Reviews
       uses AmSTeX input syntax for display of mathematical material.
       AMS authors can provide editors with computer-readable AmSTeX
       files.

That is, in fact, highly misleading.

On the other hand, I doubt anyone would take a 15-year old man page as
authoritative about current AMS policy, assuming anyone ever looks at
the page at all, so it's not a huge deal.

Cheers,
David.

> Date: Sun, 10 Aug 2008 17:21:37 -0500
> From: karl at freefriends.org (Karl Berry)
> 
>     my question is, should this page be updated
>     or simply scrapped?
> 
> It is better to have it than not to have it.
> 
>     really should be some more changes besides
>     the ones shown here.
> 
> In many cases, the man pages are mostly there to satisfy desires that
> there be man pages for every executable command.  Thus, they can
> (should) be as minimal as possible.  The real documentation for just
> about everything in the TeX system lies elsewhere and we don't want to
> repeat information that can/will get out of date.
> 
> In any case, since these moribund man pages have existed as-is for
> *many* years, there is no reason to suddenly decide to undertake a huge
> update project a few days before the final release.  Indeed, I actively
> wish we won't do that.  Any such thorough overhauls can come later, at
> leisure.  For instance, some of them could be generated with help2man,
> which at least would keep them current, and in some cases actually
> provide better information.
> 
> Anyway ...
> 
> karl


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