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

[Alejandro Colomar]

On 9/6/22 21:35, Alejandro Colomar wrote:
>    Most if not all readers of manual pages will know the meaning of 
> those little numbers.  The few that don't, are probably using man(1) for 
> the first time in their lives, and it will kindly hint that they should 
> read man(1),

Of course, I referred to:

$ man
What manual page do you want?
For example, try 'man man'.

> which also documents that as one of the first things.  And 
> for those that are reading the pages as a book, the intro page will 
> introduce the chapter to the reader, so, again, the number will be 

This has bugged me for a long time:

Things like 1-9 are manual sections.  But things like NAME, SYNOPSIS, 
... are also called manual page sections (with the little difference of 
"page").  Why, why?  Why didn't history refer to them as different 
things?  I've seen sporadically references to the numbers as chapters, 
probably from when the manual was a proper book, but that term seems to 
have fallen in use.

> enough to tell that you're still reading section 3.

BTW, I had been thinking about this recently: I need to write intro(*) 
pages for all the new subsections I created.  And system_data_types(7) 
will probably be a link page to into(3type).

Gimme some time for that.  I need inspiration.  Suggestions welcome.  :)

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

OpenPGP_signature
Description: OpenPGP digital signature