Re: Date in emacs man-file

[Stefan Kangas <stefankangas@gmail.com>]

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Stefan Kangas <stefankangas@gmail.com> writes:

> Colin Baxter <m43cap@yandex.com> writes:
>
>> I notice the second line of the file man/emacs.1.in has "2007 April
>> 13". Therefore "man emacs <RET>" will give this date at the foot of the
>> manual, along side the emacs version (27.1 in the case of the latest
>> release). Should not this date be amended to something more recent?
>
> "man 7 man-pages" says:
>
>        date   The date of the last nontrivial change that was made to the  man
>               page.   (Within  the man-pages project, the necessary updates to
>               these timestamps are handled automatically by scripts, so  there
>               is  no  need to manually update them as part of a patch.)  Dates
>               should be written in the form YYYY-MM-DD.
>
> Perhaps we could add a local timestamp variable to update it
> automatically?  It would catch even insignificant changes, but it would
> be up to the committer to update the timestamp or not.

How does the attached patch look?  In addition to fixing the dates, I
added a time-stamp-pattern and updated the title lines to match the
recommendations in "man man-pages".  (I also took a look at the gcc man
page and made sure they use the "GNU" header like I do here.)

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From e253edcb7060c436b33f544450deb300d36bb594 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Stefan Kangas <stefan@marxist.se>
Date: Sun, 11 Oct 2020 13:12:47 +0200
Subject: [PATCH] Fix man page title lines and timestamps

* doc/man/ebrowse.1:
* doc/man/emacs.1.in:
* doc/man/emacsclient.1:
* doc/man/etags.1: Update date to match last significant change.  Set
file local variable time-stamp-pattern.  Fix title line to match the
recommendations in "man man-pages".
Ref: https://lists.gnu.org/r/emacs-devel/2020-09/msg01002.html
---
 doc/man/ebrowse.1     | 6 +++++-
 doc/man/emacs.1.in    | 6 +++++-
 doc/man/emacsclient.1 | 6 +++++-
 doc/man/etags.1       | 6 +++++-
 4 files changed, 20 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)

diff --git a/doc/man/ebrowse.1 b/doc/man/ebrowse.1
index 686658b20f..330c1ea523 100644
--- a/doc/man/ebrowse.1
+++ b/doc/man/ebrowse.1
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 .\" See section COPYING for copyright and redistribution information.
-.TH EBROWSE 1
+.TH EBROWSE 1 "2008-12-14" "GNU Emacs" "GNU"
 .SH NAME
 ebrowse \- create a class hierarchy database
 .SH SYNOPSIS
@@ -98,3 +98,7 @@ document into another language, under the above conditions for
 modified versions, except that this permission notice may be stated
 in a translation approved by the Free Software Foundation.
 .
+
+.\" Local Variables:
+.\" time-stamp-pattern: "3/.TH EBROWSE 1 \"%Y-%02m-%02d\" \"GNU Emacs\" \"GNU\"$"
+.\" End:
diff --git a/doc/man/emacs.1.in b/doc/man/emacs.1.in
index 5a164e98cd..3a5758e1aa 100644
--- a/doc/man/emacs.1.in
+++ b/doc/man/emacs.1.in
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 .\" See section COPYING for copyright and redistribution information.
-.TH EMACS 1 "2007 April 13" "GNU Emacs @version@"
+.TH EMACS 1 "2020-04-05" "GNU Emacs @version@" "GNU"
 .
 .
 .SH NAME
@@ -673,3 +673,7 @@ document into another language, under the above conditions for
 modified versions, except that this permission notice may be stated
 in a translation approved by the Free Software Foundation.
 .
+
+.\" Local Variables:
+.\" time-stamp-pattern: "3/.TH EMACS 1 \"%Y-%02m-%02d\" \"GNU Emacs @version@\" \"GNU\"$"
+.\" End:
diff --git a/doc/man/emacsclient.1 b/doc/man/emacsclient.1
index 3bdaafbfc5..9d14d0fe75 100644
--- a/doc/man/emacsclient.1
+++ b/doc/man/emacsclient.1
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 .\" See section COPYING for conditions for redistribution.
-.TH EMACSCLIENT 1
+.TH EMACSCLIENT 1 "2019-08-02" "GNU Emacs" "GNU"
 .\" NAME should be all caps, SECTION should be 1-8, maybe w/ subsection
 .\" other params are allowed: see man(7), man(1)
 .SH NAME
@@ -114,3 +114,7 @@ This manual page was written by Stephane Bortzmeyer <bortzmeyer@debian.org>,
 for the Debian GNU/Linux system (but may be used by others).
 .SH COPYING
 This manual page is in the public domain.
+
+.\" Local Variables:
+.\" time-stamp-pattern: "3/.TH EMACSCLIENT 1 \"%Y-%02m-%02d\" \"GNU Emacs\" \"GNU\"$"
+.\" End:
diff --git a/doc/man/etags.1 b/doc/man/etags.1
index e10fb840ca..8053e863fc 100644
--- a/doc/man/etags.1
+++ b/doc/man/etags.1
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 .\" See section COPYING for copyright and redistribution information.
-.TH etags 1 "23nov2001" "GNU Tools" "GNU Tools"
+.TH ETAGS 1 "2019-06-24" "GNU Tools" "GNU"
 .de BP
 .sp
 .ti -.2i
@@ -296,3 +296,7 @@ Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this
 document into another language, under the above conditions for
 modified versions, except that this permission notice may be stated
 in a translation approved by the Free Software Foundation.
+
+.\" Local Variables:
+.\" time-stamp-pattern: "3/.TH ETAGS 1 \"%Y-%02m-%02d\" \"GNU Tools\" \"GNU\"$"
+.\" End:
-- 
2.28.0