Re: Bug#1018737: /usr/bin/rst2man: rst2man: .TH 5th field shouldn't be empty

[Alejandro Colomar]

Hi Dmitry,

On 9/5/22 18:42, Dmitry Shachnev wrote:
> Hi Alejandro!
>
> On Mon, Aug 29, 2022 at 09:14:26PM +0200, Alejandro Colomar wrote:
> > Package: python3-docutils
> > Version: 0.17.1+dfsg-2
> > Severity: normal
> > File: /usr/bin/rst2man
> > Tags: upstream
> > X-Debbugs-Cc: alx.manpages@gmail.com, groff@gnu.org, Quentin Monnet 
> > <quentin@isovalent.com>
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > When rst2man has no information to generate the 5th field to the
> > .TH macro (the one that sets the title line, i.e., the header and
> > footer of the manual page), it generates it as an empty argument,
> > that is "".  groff(1) and mandoc(1) have good defaults for the 5th
> > field of .TH when it is not specified, so that most manual pages
> > should need to specify it, but to use that default, the field has
> > to be missing, and an empty argument is an existing argument.
>
> Regarding this bug, upstream wants to know [1] whether omitting the 5th
> argument will work with all troff/manpage writers.
>
> I believe it is the case, but can you confirm?

AFAIK, it will work.  The behavior may differ, in that groff(1) and 
mandoc(1) produce a default text, while others may not produce any text 
at all, but it should work.

> [1]: https://sourceforge.net/p/docutils/bugs/458/#b7b6
>
> --
> Dmitry Shachnev

Cheers,

Alex

--
Alejandro Colomar
<http://www.alejandro-colomar.es/>

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