.n manual pages and -me macros

[kohler at aciri.org]

>Submitter-Id:	net
>Originator:	Eddie Kohler
>Organization:	ACIRI
>Confidential:	no
>Synopsis:	OpenBSD man.conf formats manual pages ending with ".n" with "-me", not "-man".
>Severity:	non-critical
>Priority:	low
>Category:	user
>Class:		change-request
>Release:	2.8
>Environment:
	
	System      : OpenBSD 2.8
	Architecture: OpenBSD.i386
	Machine     : i386

>Description:
Tcl man pages are stored in section "n" of the manual. They therefore have
names like "which.n", "Tcl.n", and so forth. Unfortunately, OpenBSD's man.conf
file formats files ending in ".n" with the "-me" package, not "-man".
Therefore you are screwed unless you install preformatted versions of the
manual pages.

This seems like a bad idea. I write a package that installs ".n" manual pages
by analogy with Tcl (and others). On OpenBSD, these manual pages are
unreadable. Should I "catman" them merely to make OpenBSD happy?

I bet that ".n" manual pages are more common than pages that actually require
"-me".

I'd appreciate some advice about the best "solution" for this issue
if my change request is ignored.

>How-To-Repeat:
install Tcl
man n upvar
rm /usr/local/man/catn/upvar.0
man n upvar

>Fix:
Change /etc/man.conf to build ".n" files with "nroff -man". That is,
change all occurrences of [1-9] to [1-9n] in /etc/man.conf, and remove the
"_build" lines for ".n" files.