[texhax] insufficient documentation

Schneider schneidt at mail.nih.gov
Sat Nov 22 14:53:19 CET 2014


I accidentally typed 'ebb' on the command line and got a
response.  It turned out to be a tex program:

1% which ebb
/usr/texbin/ebb
2% ebb
Missing filename argument

Try "extractbb --help" for more information.
toot 3% extractbb --help

Usage: extractbb [-q|-v] [-O] [-m|-x] file...
       extractbb --help|--version

Options:
  -h | --help	Show this help message and exit
  --version	Output version information and exit
  -q		Be quiet
  -v		Be verbose
  -O		Write output to stdout
  -m		Output .bb  file used in DVIPDFM
  -x		Output .xbb file used in DVIPDFMx (default)

I'm writing to ask that whomeever is responsible for the documentation
of this (and perhaps other tex programs) to add a few sentences in
plain English that describe what this program actually DOES.

As it stands it's useless and I would have to search to figure it out.

A quick google search turns up a far better description:
http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/trusty/man1/ebb.1.html However it
is not clear that it is the same program!  Yes, both appear to extract
the graphical (!) bounding box of an image (which is more than the
Ubuntu description says!)  BUT the immages they apparently aply to are
different so if one were to install TeX on that system the two
programs appear todo different things and so would be in [name space]
conflict!

Tom

  Thomas D. Schneider, Ph.D.
  Senior Investigator
  National Institutes of Health
  National Cancer Institute
  Center for Cancer Research
  Gene Regulation and Chromosome Biology Laboratory
  Molecular Information Theory Group
  Frederick, Maryland  21702-1201
  http://schneider.ncifcrf.gov (current link)
  http://alum.mit.edu/www/toms (permanent link)


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