Re: Errors in man pages, here: st(4): Understanding

["Michael Kerrisk (man-pages)" <mtk.manpages@gmail.com>]

[CC += Kai]

On 4/19/20 8:48 AM, Helge Kreutzmann wrote:
> Dear manpages maintainers.
> the manpage-l10n project maintains a large number of translations of
> man pages both from a large variety of sources (including manpages) as
> well for a large variety of target languages.
> 
> During their work translators notice different possible issues in the
> original (english) man pages. Sometiems this is a straightforward
> typo, sometimes a hard to read sentence, sometimes this is a convention
> not held up and sometimes we simply do not understand the original.
> 
> We use several distributions as sources and update regularly (at
> least every 2 month). This means we are fairly recent (some
> distributions like archlinux also update frequently) but might miss
> the latest upstream version once a while, so the error might be
> already fixed. We apologize and ask you to close the issue immediately
> if this should be the case, but given the huge volume of projects and
> the very limited number of volunteers we are not able to double check
> each and every issue.
> 
> Secondly we translators see the manpages in the neutral po format,
> i.e. converted and harmonized, but not the original source (be it man,
> groff, xml or other). So we cannot provide a true patch (where
> possible), but only an approximation which you need to translate into
> your source format.
> 
> Finally the issues I'm reporting have accumulated over time and are
> not always discovered by me, so sometimes my description of the
> problem my be a bit limited - do not hesitate to ask so we can clarify
> them.
> 
> I'm now reporting the errors for your project. As requested, each
> issue is sent in an unique mail for easier tracking on your side. If
> future reports should use another channel, please let me know.
> 
> **
> 
> The last sentence is unclear, what "list above"?  And booleans?
> 
> "Set various drive and driver options according to bits encoded in "
> "I<mt_count>.  These consist of the drive's buffering mode, a set of Boolean "
> "driver options, the buffer write threshold, defaults for the block size and "
> "density, and timeouts (only in kernels 2.1 and later).  A single operation "
> "can affect only one item in the list above (the Booleans counted as one "
> "item.)"

I agree that it's unclear, but I don't kjnow what the fix is. Perhaps
kai can help.

Kai, the problematic text is this:


       MTSETDRVBUFFER
              Set various drive and  driver  options  according  to  bits
              encoded  in mt_count.  These consist of the drive's buffer‐
              ing mode, a set of Boolean driver options, the buffer write
              threshold,  defaults  for  the  block size and density, and
              timeouts (only in kernels 2.1 and later).  A single  opera‐
              tion  can affect only one item in the list above (the Bool‐
              eans counted as one item.)

Do you know what the "list above" refers to?

Thanks,

Michael

-- 
Michael Kerrisk
Linux man-pages maintainer; http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/
Linux/UNIX System Programming Training: http://man7.org/training/