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

[Mojca Miklavec]

On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 7:30 AM, Werner LEMBERG wrote:
>> > I suggest that texdoc looks into the man page directories too,
>> > calling `man'.
>> >
>>
>> Hmm, texdoc is supposed to work on windows as well.  AFAIK there's
>> no man command in this strange system ;-)
>
> It should be easy to make this dependent on the existence of a roff
> program.
>
>> 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
>
>>   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.
> Regardless of calling man directly, texdoc should be able to process
> *any* documentation which comes with TeXLive.
>
> 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.

Good point.

1.) When installing ConTeXt scheme, these man pages do not get
included, but they should. (read as: if I install mptopdf binary, I
don't get its man page)

2.) Why not copying those man pages parallel to bin folder (to
texlive/2008/bin/man)? Then they would be found by man automatically.
I don't know the exact algorithm of man page searching, but we have
    texmf-bin/bin/mptopdf
    texmf-bin/man/mptopdf.1
and that works. I guess that it would also work with the proposal
above, though I didn't test.

3.) See http://svn.contextgarden.net/minimals-src/man/ for any other
idea - we have both html & pdf form of man pages there, but they could
be generated automatically for all other man pages on TL.

Mojca