Re: Help fixes & Misc.

[Pavel Roskin <proski gnu org>]

Hello, David!

> a) This one has nothing to do with the help browser, but with the
> viewer. Go to mc.1 and try F3-F8-F8. No fix included, it was out of my
> way...

This goes to my TODO list.  Not sure if I can do it before 4.6.0 release.  
Any help will be appreciated.

> b) man2hlp. Look for '.' only at beginning of line, to let '\&' lines
> show. There were some lines missing in the English help. I think it's
> enough to check the whole "buffer2" instead of the stripped "buffer" for
> commands.

Absolutely!  The whole purpose of '\&' in the beginning is to prevent 
those lines to be treated as nroff commands.

This error is clearly a consequence of using confusingly similar names 
"buffer" and "buffer2".  I also found that "buffer" was used in the 
processing of xnc.hlp, but it was set in the code that processes mc.1!
Fortunately, those variables were equal at this point.

I added more comments and renamed some variables.  I also eliminated the
cases when the same variable was used for absolutely different things.  
This laziness causes (or at least hides) real errors, as in this case.

> c) Skip empty help nodes (with 'n' and similars). I found d)
> 
> d) Some fixes in help.c to avoid going past the end of the file with
> incorrect help files (improbable?).

Please explain it better.  I also noticed nodes with empty names, but why
do we need to skip them?  Would not is be better to skip them in man2hlp?  

Let's share the workload - you write what the code does, what the patch
changes, and why it's needed, and I check the implementation.  I just
don't have hours to spend on every patch trying to understand the code,
the patch, then makinig a test case and checking if the patched version
handles it better.  You are already supposed to understand the code and
have tested the patch, so please share your knowledge.

There are projects where there is only one author, who knows every comma
in the code.  Midnight Commander is not one of those projects.

> So here are the tiny diff's and the changes to the help
> files to force these crashes. Some translation updates as well.

The translations are updated.  Thanks.

> BTW, I've seen something in the doc/ru help about getting the original
> English man page. Could I have an English version of that piece to
> translate it. My ru???? is quite poor...

Sending as a patch, so you can see its location.

====================
--- mc.1.in
+++ mc.1.in
@@ -3199,6 +3199,14 @@
 	http://www.gnome.org/mc/
 .fi
 .PP
+This manual contains information for version 4.6.0 (August 2002).  If
+you are using a more recent version, the original manual in English may
+contain more complete and up-to-date information.  To view the original
+manual use the following command under bash:
+.nf
+LANG= LC_ALL= man mc
+.fi
+.PP
 .SH "AUTHORS"
 Miguel de Icaza (miguel ximian com), Janne Kukonlehto
 (jtklehto paju oulu fi), Radek Doulik (rodo ucw cz), Fred
====================

-- 
Regards,
Pavel Roskin