[875] in linux-announce channel archive
man_db-2.3.10 manual pager suite
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Lars Wirzenius)
Thu Aug 3 19:33:13 1995
Date: Tue, 1 Aug 1995 18:51:22 +0300
From: Lars Wirzenius <wirzeniu@cc.helsinki.fi>
To: linux-activists@niksula.hut.fi, linux-announce@vger.rutgers.edu
X-Mn-Key: announce
Subject: man_db-2.3.10 manual pager suite
From: Wilf <G.Wilford@ee.surrey.ac.uk>
Organization: University of Surrey, Guildford, England
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.announce
Approved: linux-announce@news.ornl.gov (Lars Wirzenius)
Followup-to: comp.os.linux.misc
Keywords: man_db man manual pager FSSTND database
Announcing the public release of man_db 2.3.10.
-----------------------------------------------
This is a bug/portability fixed version of 2.3.5
man_db is a manual pager suite that makes extensive use of databases to
speed up the location and display of manual pages within the manual
page hierarchies.
Amongst other things, it can handle compressed/uncompressed/nls man/cat
pages. See below for additions since 2.2.x and read the man_db-manual
for more information.
The main programs included in this package are `man', `mandb',
`whatis', `apropos', `manpath' and `catman'. The program `makewhatis'
is no longer required as whatis information is stored directly within
the databases.
The lsm:
--------
Begin3
Title: man_db
Version: 2.3.10
Entered-date: 24JUL95
Description: manual pager suite using databases of file locations
for increased speed.
Keywords: manual pager database man
Author: G.Wilford@ee.surrey.ac.uk (Graeme Wilford)
armbru@pond.sub.org (Markus Armbruster)
Maintained-by: G.Wilford@ee.surrey.ac.uk (Graeme Wilford)
Primary-site: sunsite.unc.edu /pub/Linux/system/Manual-pagers
282kB man_db-2.3.10.tgz
20kB man_db-manual-0.5.cat.gz }
33kB man_db-manual-0.5.dvi.gz } no change
41kB man_db-manual-0.5.ps.gz }
Platforms: GNU make v3.68+
Copying-policy: GPL: Freely distributable, but Copyrighted
End
NEWS relating to changes during 2.3.x phase of development:
-----------------------------------------------------------
Major changes since man_db-2.3.5:
Fixes:
------
o Global databases were not owned by setuid owner (if applicable).
As a consequence only mandb could update the databases unless
man was run by superuser. Stupid bug.
o The keyword passed to apropos _never_ matched the first word
of any whatis line.
o FAVOUR_STRAYCATS code (if enabled), did not work properly.
o zsoelim did not work as advertised.
Improvements:
-------------
o Man removes it's temporary files upon abnormal termination.
o apropos does proper word matching rather than the fuzzy
matching of 2.3.5. eg. supplying any of the keywords:
`ld.so', `a.out', `dynamic', `linker' or `loader' will match
the following entry:
ld.so (8) - a.out dynamic linker/loader
whereas `a.out' and `loader' used to fail.
o man/whatis/apropos return with exit code 16 if manual
page/file or keyword is not matched. Previously exit code 0
was used making it difficult for callers to know if the lookup
was successful.
o addition of German message catalogue.
o `apropos' and `man -k' do POSIX specified regex matching rather
than keyword searches if the environment variable POSIXLY_CORRECT
is defined.
o added glob-only support of native system manual hierarchies
on HP-UX, OSF and Solaris operating systems. Improved the
whatis parsing code to cope with majority of HP-UX manual pages.
o ported to NeXTstep.
Major changes since man_db-2.2.1:
Added support for...
--------------------
o Non-standard section names i.e. multi-character
o Compressed manual pages.
A new utility `zsoelim' is included to correctly handle nroff
.so requests that point to a file which has been compressed.
o Compressed stray cats.
By definition, stray cats are not re-creatable as they have no
relative source manual page. As they may have non-default
compression extensions and may reside on read-only media,
stray cats have the same compression support as manual pages.
o FSSTND proposed `extension' support.
Specific package manual pages may be installed in the standard
sections but with a package-unique extension appended as in
exit(3tcl) - ../man/man3/exit.3tcl. Using the command
`man -e tcl exit'
would then display an exit manual page with a tcl extension, if
available. Of course, `man 3tcl exit' works as always.
o FSSTND proposed NLS man subdirectories.
Of the form .../man/<locale>/man<sec>/
o NLS message catalogue hooks.
Provision has been made for the programs to emit their messages in
a language dependent form.
o `whatis' referred manual pages.
Some manual pages contain relevant information for commands or
programs that would not otherwise reference the page.
The `whatis' part of the manual page is used to create virtual
links to these pages by all of the names mentioned within it.
Examples include names such as `.' and `:' referencing the local
shell manual page.
o Catman utility.
Used to pre-format the manual pages into cat pages.
o Operating systems other than Linux.
man_db has been reported to compile on the following platforms:
Linux, SunOS, Solaris, Ultrix, OSF, HP-UX, AIX, IRIX
(although portability does not extend to support of native
manual tree structures on some of these systems, eg. HP-UX)
o Berkeley DB library routines.
This compliments the support of both gdbm and ndbm which already
existed. DB databases may be shared across platforms.
o $MANOPTS environment variable.
The environment variable MANOPTS may be set to any string in
command line option/argument format. It is parsed by man(1) prior
to it's actual command line.
o Per manual hierarchy cat directory locations.
It is possible to redirect your cat pages to other directories or
even other file systems.
o Per manual hierarchy nroff/[tg]roff format scripts.
Ability to create custom formatter scripts that are called by
man(1) to enable format/display of non-standard manual pages or
manual pages requiring a special macro package.
o Extension of `man -l'.
Arguments following -l are interpreted as local files requiring
format and display. Extensions are:
`man -l -' formats and displays stdin.
`man -l foo.1.gz' decompresses, formats and displays foo.1.gz.
o Latin1 manual pages/choice of nroff output device.
o Viewing of ASCII manual pages formatted for a latin1 output device
on a 7 bit ASCII terminal (-7).
o Whatis and apropos utilities support regex and wildcard matching.
o checkman.
Shell script utility that will find and display duplicated manual
pages found across manual page hierarchies.
o mkcatdirs.
Shell script utility to create appropriate cat directories after
installation and setup.
Conceptual improvements
-----------------------
o Replacement of single database with multiple modular db's.
Easier integration of additional information into the databases in
the future.
o Both user and global databases share the same name:
`index.<db-type>'
where <db-type> could be `bt', `db' or `pag' and `dir'.
o Databases contain `whatis' text.
Makewhatis and text whatis databases are redundant, although
whatis and apropos will use the text whatis database for information
if they cannot read from a relevant index database.
o straycats handled without need for `placeholders'.
o Friendly less(1) prompt.
If man(1) uses less(1) as it's pager (dependent on both static and
dynamic factors), the prompt is modified to suit the manual page
being displayed. The modification performed is also changeable by
the user.
o man_db manual.
man_db has a manual that covers the setup, maintenance and use of
a generic online manual page system.
o Modes of operation.
The man_db utilities can be compiled with various modes of
operation in mind. Eg. man can be stopped from updating databases
and/or creating cat files in situations where security is extremely
important. See the man_db manual for details.
Speed improvements
------------------
o Background compression/saving of cat files.
Cat files are compressed and saved in the background, whilst the
user is able to browse the formatted page directly.
o Merge of straycats and makewhatis into mandb.
While mandb has slowed, it now incorporates makewhatis and straycats
functionality and is much faster as a whole. 2.0a2 used grep/awk,
2.2 used C regex and 2.3 now uses lex sourced C to strip out the
whatis information from the raw man or cat files.
o Berkeley DB support.
Provides lower database initialisation overhead as compared with
gdbm.
o Extremely fast whatis(1) searches.
whatis(1) uses keyed database lookups to retrieve whatis strings
for standard (non regex/wildcard) searches.
Fixes
-----
o Correct handling of $MANSECT.
The environment variable MANSECT is no longer ignored.
o Acknowledgement of $MANPATH order.
manpath elements are searched in the order specified.
Wilf.
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