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209 lines
9.5 KiB
209 lines
9.5 KiB
8 months ago
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<!DOCTYPE html>
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<html lang="en">
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<head>
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<title>About MANPATH.be</title>
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<link href="/static/page.css" rel="stylesheet"/>
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<link href="/static/favicon.png" rel="icon"/>
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<meta charset="utf-8"/>
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</head>
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<body>
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<div class="container">
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<div class="left">
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<ul>
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<li><a href="/">Home</a></li>
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<li><a href="/about">About</a></li>
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</ul>
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</div>
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<div class="main">
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<h1>About</h1>
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<p>
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This site is a collection of free and open-source man pages. Its
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purpose is to provide convenient and stable access to man page content.
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For example, it has man pages for several distributions, it has permalinks,
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it interlinks man pages in various ways and allows linking into
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a specific line or section of a man page.
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</p>
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<div>
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<b>TOC:</b>
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<a href="#contact">Contact</a>, <a href="#features">Features</a>,
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<a href="#technology_stack">Technology Stack</a>,
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<a href="#see_also">See Also</a>
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and <a href="#related_services">Related Services</a>
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</div>
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<h2 id="contact">Contact</h2>
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<p>
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This page and the software behind this site is written by <a href="https://gms.tf">Georg Sauthoff</a>. Don't hesitate to <a href="mailto:webmaster@manpath.be">contact me</a> if you have comments, questions or suggestions about this site.
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</p>
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<h2 id="features">Features</h2>
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<p>
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Selected features of this site:
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</p>
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<ul>
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<li>Permalinks - each man page shows a permalink which is a stable
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reference to its content. This is useful when citing a man page
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or parts of it. Stable means that you get the exact same content
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even if newer versions of that man page source are imported, either
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when a new distribution version is added or when an updated package
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(that provides the man page) is added.
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</li>
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<li>Short links - short links are easy to construct and
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thus can be used for direct access to a man page. For example, to access the <code>strcopy()</code> man page in Fedora 29: <a href="/f29/3/strcpy">/f29/3/strcpy</a> — or to access the <code>open</code> man page in the highest prioritized section: <a href="/f29/open">/f29/open</a>
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</li>
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<li>Overview pages - there are pages that list all the section of a
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distribution or all the pages inside a section, such as
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<a href="/f29/3">/f29/3</a>
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(all pages in Section 3 in Fedora 29) and <a href="/29">/f29</a>
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(all sections in Fedora 29). This allows for better indexing and
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quick in-browser searches.
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</li>
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<li>Inter-section links - for some names there are man pages in
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multiple sections. Since sometimes it's easy to end up in the wrong
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section or to be surprised that there are other man pages of the
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same name in other sections the navigation column contains links to
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man pages of the same name in other sections.
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</li>
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<li>Inter-distribution links - there also links between man pages of
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the same name in other distributions. This might be convenient to
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quickly check the availability of an API in another system or
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distribution version.
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</li>
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<li>Reverse-links - i.e. what links here
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</li>
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<li>Responsive layout - the HTML pages use CSS Flexible Box layout
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such that the man pages are decently viewable on different
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screen sizes, e.g. also on smartphones.
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</li>
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<li>No JavaScript - omitting JavaScript helps with load times
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and saves some cycles on the client side. Some frontend
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frameworks come with some good design defaults, an easy
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to use grid and responsive design but add some hundred
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kilobytes including some JavaScript. The JavaScript might
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be there for some extra features or to implement
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responsive layout in legacy browsers. Thus, there are
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basically only downsides on using JavaScript in a site
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like this.
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</li>
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</ul>
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<h2 id="technology_stack">Technology Stack</h2>
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<p>
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The site's content is stored in a <a href="https://www.postgresql.org/">Postgresql</a> database. The loader
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that imports man pages into the database is written in Python,
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using <a href="https://docs.sqlalchemy.org/en/13/">SQLAlchemy Core expressions</a> for database operations.
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The actual site software is written in Go, using just the
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<a href="https://godoc.org/github.com/lib/pq">pq Postgres driver</a>
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and the <a href="https://github.com/NYTimes/gziphandler">gziphandler</a> package as
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non-standard dependencies. That means the Go code implements a
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HTTP server (using <code>net/http</code>) that implements
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a URL multiplexer, selects from the database and executes
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some nested Go <a href="https://golang.org/pkg/html/template/">HTML templates</a>.
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The Go server is put behind an
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<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nginx">NGINX</a> reverse proxy such
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that
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popular pages are served from a cache and to allow for seamless updates.
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</p>
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<h2 id="see_also">See Also</h2>
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<ul>
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<li><a href="https://gms.tf/announcing-manpathbe.html">Announcing MANPATH.be</a> (2019-06-07) - a Blog article
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by the creator of this site that gives some perspective on
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the motivation behind this project and its execution.
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</li>
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<li><a href="https://manpages.bsd.lv/history.html">History of UNIX Manpages</a>
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</li>
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<li>The obligatory xkcd comics: <a href="https://xkcd.com/293/">RTFM</a>, <a href="https://xkcd.com/1343/">Manuals</a> and <a href="https://xkcd.com/1692/">Man Page</a>
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</li>
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</ul>
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<h2 id="related_services">Related Services</h2>
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<p>
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There are many browsable man page repositories available. The following
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details some of the differences of the more popular ones with this site.
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</p>
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<p>
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All of the compared sites are missing some semi-advanced features like
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permalinks, inter-section links, inter-distribution links, reverse-links,
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linkable sections and line-numbers in man pages.
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</p>
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<p>
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The Debian project runs <a
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href="https://manpages.debian.org/">manpages.debian.org</a> that
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provides access to the man pages of some Debian releases. As of
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2019-04-30, most pages have inter-system links to Debian stretch, Debian testing,
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stretch-backports and Debian unstable. It's unclear how stable these links are.
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That means whether the links to stretch will still work after the next stable
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Debian is released. There are no permalinks to pages of a distribution
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version - e.g. a page in stretch or unstable might be replaced by an
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package update at any time. On the positive side, there are
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inter-section links, including links to translated pages.
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</p>
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<p>
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The FreeBSD project has a <a
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href="https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi">Web form</a> for querying
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the man pages of various UNIX/Linux distributions. Since there aren't any
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overview pages the pages aren't indexed by web search engines like
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Google. The produced links are long query strings, thus not user
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friendly for writing them from scratch. There are no inter-distribution links for
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easily switching between man page versions.
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</p>
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<p><a href="http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/">Man7.org</a> serves the man
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pages from the <a href="http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/">Linux
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man-pages project</a> and a few other projects. It probably closely
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follows the master branch of the man-pages project. Or it contains the HTML
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renderings of the latest release. In any case, links into this repository
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aren't stable because you just get some current version. It's also unclear
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how often the other projects are updated.
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</p>
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<p><a href="https://man.cx/">Man.cx</a> tracks almost all man-pages of
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Debian testing. In contrast to many other services, it includes the date
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of the import run. Similar to other services, the links aren't stable,
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one can only reference the current version. On the plus side, it
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provides inter-section links.
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</p>
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<p><a href="http://man.he.net/">Hurrican Electric</a> also provides a man
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page repository besides its many other awesome free network related
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services (related to IPv6, DNS etc.). The HTML rendering of the man
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pages is very basic, e.g. bold/underscore markup is gone, sections
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aren't rendered as headings, and URLs aren't rendered as link.
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Parameters are encoded as query strings, but there are some overview
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pages such that a robot has a chance indexing the pages. It's completely
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opaque from which system the pages are imported from. As of 2019-04-30,
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it looks like the pages weren't updated in the last 6 years. The man
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pages are likely from a Linux distribution that was released in 2013.
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</p>
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<p>
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<a href="https://linux.die.net/man/">die.net</a> also has a
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Linux man page repository. There isn't any information on
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how often these man pages are updated, from which Linux system
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they are imported from and who is behind this service ('a few dozen
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friends in the US'). The links aren't stable, but the pages are
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indexed well by Google.
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</p>
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</div>
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<nav>
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</nav>
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</div>
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<div>
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<a href="/impressum">Impressum</a>
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</div>
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</body>
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</html>
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