Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2008 19:37:56 +1100 (EST) From: Ian Smith <smithi@nimnet.asn.au> To: Gonzalo Nemmi <gnemmi@gmail.com> Cc: Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de>, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: man -t odd page size Message-ID: <20081023174911.P4254@sola.nimnet.asn.au> In-Reply-To: <20081023035928.C55AC1065738@hub.freebsd.org> References: <20081023035928.C55AC1065738@hub.freebsd.org>
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On Wed, 22 Oct 2008 23:35:25 -0200 Gonzalo Nemmi <gnemmi@gmail.com> wrote: > On Wednesday 22 October 2008 10:38:40 pm Polytropon wrote: [..] Polytropon: thanks for pdfman script - but does 'pdfman ipfw' work for you? Here the 'overprinting' is misaligned in gv, while others are ok. > > I know this is not the best idea, but it should be accomplishable > > without many problems. A better idea would be to write a simple > > filter that convert the man page (including formatting characters) > > into LaTeX source and then run it through pdflatex. > > Exactly .. you got it just the way I wanted .. after your explanantion, the > question _begs_ to be asked: do we, citizens of ISO 216 adopting countries, > have to walk that cumbersome path in order to get something as simple as an > ISO compliant document?? > > Shouldn't it be the other way around??? > > Does an inmensily huge majority have to walk the extra mile in order to get an > ISO compliant document whereas a small minority benefits from having non ISO > complaint default formats??? Gonzalo: shouldn't that be 'the extra kilometre?' :) Well, a quarter of the people on this planet live in China, so by your theory shouldn't the FreeBSD lists, docs and code all be in Chinese? I doubt an 'immensely huge majority' of FreeBSD systems are located outside the US (data at http://www.bsdstats.org/freebsd/countries.php notwithstanding, reckoning Australia to have the most FreeBSD users :) > I, for once, would pretty much like to know the logic behind that decision. It's not logic, nor even a decision, but simply a matter of tradition. > > > and on a side note: will we ever get to see ISO 216 A4 as the default > > > choice for output instead of not-standard, only usefull in the US but > > > useless in the rest of the whole world "letter" page size and the > > > likes??? I've yet to run into any printing or display software that didn't offer a wide choice of formats, including A4 and many other A* sizes, so what any particular software chooses as its 'default' scarcely matters. > > You're getting my thoughts, man. :-) I'd like to see this happen, > > too, but I don't think the developers of FreeBSD and all the fine > > applications will say goodbye to their Letter, Legal, Exec etc. > > paper formats. A4 isn't a DIN standard anymore, its ISO for many > > years now, and unlike Letter, it has the ability to be scaled > > (to half size, to quarter size, to double size) easily. Today, > > the manual replacement of many different settings is needed to > > get a system A4 compliant. > > > > Greetings from Germany, where A4 is the standard for more than > > a century now. =^_^= > > I really hope they do, or at least, start contemplating the fact that ISO > standards are usefull as a whole or are not usefull at all .. That's not true at all; there's no 'all or nothing' about standards. What actually works and is adopted in the real world determines that. Ask yourself: how come the world uses TCP/IP for internet communications rather than the OSI X.200-X.219 suite? How come we're still using SMTP plus a pile of RFCs to deliver email rather than the X.400-X.420 suite? Apart from SNMP and its use of (a subset of) the ASN.1 / BER notation, and the X.500-X.521 directory services model to the extent of X.501 certificates, not much of the massive CCITT / OSI / ISO 'standards' have ever entered common usage, most being a camel designed by committee. In '91 I bought three 'fascicles' (volumes) of the CCITT Blue Book for the best part of A$500, then convinced it was the way things would go. I was entirely wrong :) but I don't regret that study for ASN.1 alone. > Gretings from Argentina, where A4 is the standard from 1943. > > And yes .. so are the metric system, kilograms, litres, etc :) I suspect the Yanquis will abandon letter, legal etc paper sizes around the same time they jettison pounds and ounces, feet and inches, gallons and pints .. that is, you probably shouldn't be holding your breath :) cheers, Ian
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