Correct way to install preprocessed man pages

[Jake Smith]

On 01/05/13 15:23, olli hauer wrote:
> On 2013-05-01 15:48, Jake Smith wrote:
>> On 2013-05-01 14:09, Jake Smith wrote:
>>> On 2013-05-01 14:00, Dominic Fandrey wrote:
>>>> On 01/05/2013 14:29, Jake Smith wrote:
>>>>> I am putting a new port together, but the source for the man pages is not provided in the source tar for the package (and I can't find a public repo). Instead only the "preprocessed" version is included.
>>>>
>>>> Do you mean it's already compressed or it's already formatted? That
>>>> would be odd, because I think that should tie in with TERM and PAGER.
>>>> So it must be considered broken by design.
>>>>
>>>> Regards
>>>
>>> It's already formatted, sorry I realise the term "preprocessed"
>>> doesn't really mean anything. If you cat the man page file it looks
>>> like a correctly formatted man page should. I don't have access to the
>>> original man page source.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Jake
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> freebsd-ports at freebsd.org mailing list
>>> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-ports
>>> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-ports-unsubscribe at freebsd.org"
>>
>>
>> Just a bit more information to help explain what I'm on about.
>>
>> The port is for MySQL ZRM, the source can be downloaded from http://www.zmanda.com/downloads/community/ZRM-MySQL/2.2/Source/MySQL-zrm-2.2.0.tar.gz and an example of the kind of man page I am talking about in the tar is './MySQL-zrm-2.2.0/usr/share/man/man1/mysql-zrm.1'.
>>
>> Thanks for your time!
>> Jake
>
> Hm, the files are catman(1) pages not man(1) pages.
> I suspect the only way is to ask upstream to provide the man pages.
>
> _______________________________________________
> freebsd-ports at freebsd.org mailing list
> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-ports
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-ports-unsubscribe at freebsd.org"
>

I did a quick google and looks like the maintainer of the OpenBSD port 
has requested the man page source from upstream back in 2010, but with 
no response, 
https://forums.zmanda.com/showthread.php?2816-Mysql-zrm-man-pages

I can request it again, but seeing that post makes me a little 
sceptical. Looking at the OpenBSD port, it seems he is just putting the 
formatted catman(1) man pages directly into man/catX.

Going forward with this port, is it at all acceptable to use the 
catman(1) man pages as mentioned above?

Does any one know if there is a way to convert a catman(1) page to 
man(1)? Basically the opposite of ``nroff -man''

Many Thanks!
Jake