From f587c402075905e38ffbe5aaabd11aa321c87bc5 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>
Date: Wed, 5 Mar 2008 02:38:57 +0000
Subject: [PATCH] Standardize manual page encoding
Standardize manual page encoding to either the legacy encoding for a
locale or UTF-8. Country names should not be included in locale-specific
directory names unless there is a significant difference in language.
Characters in the manual page must be representable in the legacy encoding
for now.
Patch from Colin Watson. Closes #440420.
git-archimport-id: rra@debian.org--lenny/debian-policy--devel--3.7--patch-31
---
debian/changelog | 2 ++
policy.sgml | 34 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
upgrading-checklist.html | 7 +++++++
3 files changed, 43 insertions(+)
diff --git a/debian/changelog b/debian/changelog
index 404dd06..21a9e5e 100644
--- a/debian/changelog
+++ b/debian/changelog
@@ -1,5 +1,7 @@
debian-policy (3.7.4.0) unstable; urgency=low
+ * Bug fix: "[AMENDMENT 11/02/2008] Manual page encoding", thanks to
+ Colin Watson (Closes: #440420).
* Bug fix: "support for wrapped Uploaders should now be mandatory"
(Closes: #431813).
* Bug fix: "Examples of dpkg frontends should mention apt now", thanks
diff --git a/policy.sgml b/policy.sgml
index ad4fec3..262db3c 100644
--- a/policy.sgml
+++ b/policy.sgml
@@ -8519,6 +8519,40 @@ name ["<var>syshostname</var>"]:
be present in the future.
</footnote>
</p>
+
+ <p>
+ Manual pages in locale-specific subdirectories of
+ <file>/usr/share/man</file> should use either UTF-8 or the usual
+ legacy encoding for that language (normally the one corresponding
+ to the shortest relevant locale name in
+ <file>/usr/share/i18n/SUPPORTED</file>). For example, pages under
+ <file>/usr/share/man/fr</file> should use either UTF-8 or
+ ISO-8859-1.<footnote>
+ <prgn>man</prgn> will automatically detect whether UTF-8 is in
+ use. In future, all manual pages will be required to use
+ UTF-8.
+ </footnote>
+ </p>
+
+ <p>
+ A country name (the <tt>DE</tt> in <tt>de_DE</tt>) should not be
+ included in the subdirectory name unless it indicates a
+ significant difference in the language, as this excludes
+ speakers of the language in other countries.<footnote>
+ At the time of writing, Chinese and Portuguese are the main
+ languages with such differences, so <file>pt_BR</file>,
+ <file>zh_CN</file>, and <file>zh_TW</file> are all allowed.
+ </footnote>
+ </p>
+
+ <p>
+ Due to limitations in current implementations, all characters
+ in the manual page source should be representable in the usual
+ legacy encoding for that language, even if the file is
+ actually encoded in UTF-8. Safe alternative ways to write many
+ characters outside that range may be found in
+ <manref name="groff_char" section="7">.
+ </p>
</sect>
<sect>
diff --git a/upgrading-checklist.html b/upgrading-checklist.html
index 0be5ddc..e3eedd2 100644
--- a/upgrading-checklist.html
+++ b/upgrading-checklist.html
@@ -55,6 +55,13 @@ picking your way through this list.
<pre>
3.7.4.0 unreleased
* The Uploaders field in debian/control may be wrapped. [5.6.3]
+ * Manual pages in locale-specific directories should use either the
+ legacy encoding for that directory or UTF-8. Country names should
+ not be included in locale-specific manual page directories unless
+ indicating a significant difference in the language. All
+ characters in the manual page source should be representable in the
+ legacy encoding for a locale even if the man page is encoded in
+ UTF-8. [12.1]
3.7.3.0 Dec 2007
* Package version numbers may contain tildes, which sort before
anything, even the end of a part. [5.6.12]
--
2.39.5