[texhax] insufficient documentation

Bob Tennent rdt at cs.queensu.ca
Sat Nov 22 15:13:39 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.

Have you tried 

man extractbb

or

man ebb

That would be the usual way to get basic documentation about a
program in a Unix-like context.

 >|A quick google search turns up a far better description:
 >|http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/trusty/man1/ebb.1.htm
 >|l 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!

It's possible that in a distribution there are both texlive
and standalone packages that provide the same program. And
they may indeed be somewhat different. You'll just have to
cope.

Bob T.



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