UE/UR macros in manpages
Hi debian-devel,
as of version 1.23.43, lintian checks for warnings in manpages with
man's new --warning option (with man since 2.5.1). For quite some
packages, lintian will produce an error like this:
W: wmweather+: manpage-has-errors-from-man usr/share/man/man1/wmweather+.1x.gz 191: warning: `UR' not defined
This is because the groff version we have in Debian (which is used by
man to render the manpage) does not support the UE and UR macro used by
many manpages to specify URLs. (Instead, it supports the slightly less
(?) powerful URL macro for that purpose.)
$ man --warnings -l wmweather+.1 1>/dev/null
<standard input>:191: warning: `UR' not defined
<standard input>:193: warning: `UE' not defined
$
Actually it is not really a problem, since groff ignores macros it does
not know, so the manpage is shown anyway as expected, just without the
URL link being a link. Additionally, it might be more appropriate to add
UR/UE support to our groff package than to patch each and every package
to have this problem fixed. Meanwhile, lintian could get some
appropriate override implemented, so that the warnings don't show up
anymore.
Since I'm not sure what's best now, and I also don't really know about
the reasons and motivation for different URL-related macros in roff
implementations, I'm seeking advice, especially from groff insiders.
Colin?
Best regards,
Martin
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