LinuxQuestions.org - [SOLVED] Issue with man page formatting in Japanese

- Slackware (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/)

- - Issue with man page formatting in Japanese (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/issue-with-man-page-formatting-in-japanese-4175594307/)

Issue with man page formatting in Japanese

Keiichi SHIGA has translated all man pages for scripts in pkgtools and slackpkg packages to Japanese, thanks to him.

But there are formatting issues: some lines are not broken where they should and we see unexpected line justifications, see the attached pic.

Also, when running "man" with "most" as pager(1) I see warnings like these:

Code:

didier[~/Slint/repo/x86_64/slint-14.2/source/localization/wip]$ man ./ja.installpkg

<standard input>:28: warning [p 1, 2.7i]: cannot adjust line

<standard input>:32: warning [p 1, 3.5i]: can't break line

<standard input>:33: warning [p 1, 3.7i]: can't break line

<standard input>:39: warning [p 1, 5.0i]: cannot adjust line

<standard input>:43: warning [p 1, 5.8i]: cannot adjust line

<standard input>:43: warning [p 1, 6.0i]: can't break line

Of course the man pages are encoded in UTF-8 and GROFF_ENCODING is set to UTF-8.

If that matters the po4a application is used to convert the man pages to/from PO files.

I have uploaded the man pages in Japanese here.

Any clue appreciated, as usual.

(1) these warnings are not displayed if I use "less" but the result is the same.

Well, man2html does a good job, I uploaded converted man pages that you can check with:

Code:

lftp -c "mirror http://slint.fr/testing/man_pages_ja/html/"

cd html

firefox *html

and Keiichi already stored the man pages on his website:
https://sites.google.com/site/slackwarejapanese/man

He also pointed me to the man-db package: https://slackbuilds.org/repository/14.2/system/man-db/ that will hopefully solve the formatting issue, thanks to B. Watson.

I will check after my afternoon walk, stay tuned.

I installed man-db and yes the man pages look better.

I consider replacing man by man-db in Slint as it better handles UTF-8 among other reasons but whether this change will occur in Slackware-current is of course up to Pat.

Debian ships man-db, so I assume that will be safe.

Here are, from left to right, pics of "man-db" pages using "less" then "most" as pager, that you can compare with a "man" page using "most" (last on the right).

The issue using "man" also occurs with most of the man pages in Japanese shipped in Slackware.

As far as I am in concern this issue is solved using man-db.

To be complete I saw a few lines not wrapped using "most" with some other pages, but even then one can scroll horizontally using the left and right arrow keys. Or just use "less".