[xml/sgml-pkgs] Bug#439214: Bug#439214: docbook2x-man runs without error but produces no output

[Daniel Leidert]

Am Donnerstag, den 23.08.2007, 17:37 -0400 schrieb Adrian Mariano:

[..]
> > First: Can you please attach the file instead of quoting it inline? It
> > would really, really help to decrease the necessary work for me.
> > 
> 
> Sure.  I only attached them that way because the debian bug system
> didn't seem to give me an alternative.  

Did you use reportbug? In this case, check the `?' output: a = attach.

> > > <book lang="en">
> > [snip]
> > 
> > Second: Manpages are of <refentry> root element. But your book doesn't
> > contain any refentry element. For an example of a manpage written in
> > bocbook XML
> > see /usr/share/doc/docbook-xsl/examples/foo.1.example_manpage.xml.gz.
> > 
> > So to my knowledge, you/docbook2x cannot produce any manpage from the
> > file you gave. You probably need to adjust the units.xml creation from
> > the texinfo file to create a manpage source.
> 
> I'll provide some background: I was contacted by somebody associated
> with ithe docbook project (Eric).  He asked that I make the manual to my
> program (units) available in docbook format. I have my manual written
> in texinfo and it is being translated by a fantastically crude script
> into roff.  Apparently Eric tried to translate my roff to docbook and
> it failed because I have bad roff.  He suggested I could instead
> create docbook directly from the texinfo and make the roff from the
> docbook.  

This will only work for refentry elements.

> I don't actually know anything about docbook, I was just trying to
> assemble the scripts to do the above.  It sounds like either my
> texinfo source is defective

Hm. Not sure. Your texinfo produces fine Docbook XML, so I don't think,
it's "defective" ...

> or the texinfo command that generated the
> docbook file isn't doing the right thing.  

... but it produces a book instead of a refentry. So I think, the
command doesn't do the right job for you. You should check, when/if this
command prepares a refentry from texinfo files.

> Note, however, that the example you mention above didn't work either:
> 
> % docbook2x-man examp.xml
> /usr/bin/iconv: illegal input sequence at position 526
> /usr/bin/db2x_manxml: program in pipeline exited with an error

Do you use an ext3 filesystem with dir_index enabled? You are maybe
bitten by
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=430118
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=425928

Can you check this?

dumpe2fs /dev/whatever | grep "Filesystem features"

Regards, Daniel