Re: man -t odd page size

On Thursday 23 October 2008 6:44:59 am Valentin Bud wrote:
hello,
what do you know about this site: http://www.metricamerica.com/.
i don't remember where i have read that America is going to apply the SI
(ess eye)
unit system.
so things are going to change maybe even the A4 papersize.

a good day,
v

On Thu, Oct 23, 2008 at 10:37 AM, Ian Smith <smithi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Wed, 22 Oct 2008 23:35:25 -0200 Gonzalo Nemmi <gnemmi@xxxxxxxxx> 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?

No .. languages are not ISO standards... let alone the fact that we are not
discussing languages in here.

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 :)

That's only if you take bsdstats as the ultimate and most authoritative word
on the location of FreeBSD based systems. I do not. And actually Im running 3
FreeBSD systems in my place and Argentina doesn't even figure on that list.

> 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.

I wonder why did we stop using the abacus .. or candles .. they where pretty
traditional back in those days ...

> > > 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.

To you .. but not for me or for anyone who lives in a country in which
non-iso-standard paper (like letter) is simply _not_available_ or costs twice
as much as A4.

I undertand this may not be a problem for someone who can just "man -t man |
ps2pdf14 - > man_getopt" and get a printable pdf that uses the whole page but
I have to go "zcat `man -w ls` | groff -Tps -dpaper=a4 -P-pa4 -mandoc |
ps2pdf - tmp.pdf" in order to get a usefull output or use the first method
and waste a lot of paper (wasting resources .. wich is something the, we,
citizens of the third world can not afford).

> > 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.

ISO 216 works (and it has worked ever since it's conception, more than 100
years ago) and is adopted in the real world, except for the US, Mexico and
Canada.

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-paper.html

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?

It became a defacto standard ... Just as much as Microsoft Windows did .. Are
by any chance using Windows?????

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.

Sorry to hear that :(

> 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 :)

Never did, never will in my lifetime ... ;)

cheers, Ian

Regards Ian :)
--
Blessings
Gonzalo Nemmi
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