[xml/sgml-pkgs] Bug#539890: xsltproc's -o argument is ambiguous

[Jonny Lamb]

Package: xsltproc
Version: 1.1.24-2
Severity: minor
Tags: patch

If there is no output to xsltproc's invocation, it does not create the
file specified in the -o argument. Therefore, these two calls are
different:

    xsltproc -o foo [...]

    xsltproc [...] > foo

because in the case of xsltproc having no output, the former will not
even create the file "foo", whereas of course the latter will create
an empty file.

The man page does not mention this behaviour. I have attached a patch
to add mention of it to the manpage. I'm welcome for my wording and/or
nroff to be fixed as you see fit.

Thanks,

-- 
Jonny Lamb, UK
jonny at debian.org
-------------- next part --------------
diff -Nruad -Nruad libxslt-1.1.24.orig/doc/xsltproc.1 libxslt-1.1.24/doc/xsltproc.1
--- libxslt-1.1.24.orig/doc/xsltproc.1	2009-08-04 10:18:17.000000000 +0100
+++ libxslt-1.1.24/doc/xsltproc.1	2009-08-04 10:21:20.000000000 +0100
@@ -161,6 +161,17 @@
 will maybe not work, but
 \fB\-o directory/\fR
 will\.
+.sp
+.it 1 an-trap
+.nr an-no-space-flag 1
+.nr an-break-flag 1
+.br
+Also note
+If there is no output to xsltproc,
+\fIFILE\fR
+will not be created at all\. An empty file will
+\fBnot\fR
+be created.
 .RE
 .PP
 \fB\-\-encoding \fR\fB\fIENCODING\fR\fR