Printing MAN pages

Stijn Hoop stijn at win.tue.nl
Thu Sep 8 13:32:07 PDT 2005


On Thu, Sep 08, 2005 at 07:55:19PM +0200, Erik Trulsson wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 08, 2005 at 07:36:46PM +0200, Stijn Hoop wrote:
> > On Thu, Sep 08, 2005 at 07:53:28PM +0300, Giorgos Keramidas wrote:
> > > Gerard Seibert wrote:
> > > > I am trying to figure out how to print 'man' pages. If I try a simple
> > > > redirect, such as: "man foo > foo.txt" the new file is loaded with
> > > > control symbols, etc. that are not really printable. I want to save
> > > > the files if possible, and print them out at a later date. It that is
> > > > not possible, how would I go about printing them out in real time?
> > > 
> > > 	man -t foo > foo.ps
> > > 
> > > will generate Postscript output, which is a lot better for printing.
> > 
> > Highly useful to know, but shouldn't we update the man page for man(1)?
> > 
> >      -t          Use /usr/bin/groff -S -man to format the manual page, passing
> >                  the output to stdout.  The output from /usr/bin/groff -S -man
> >                  may need to be passed through some filter or another before
> >                  being printed.
> > 
> > This does not exactly spell 'output postscript' to me...
> 
> It does if you know that postscript is the default output format of
> groff.   If one doesn't know what format groff outputs by default, it is
> easily learned by reading the groff(1) manpage.

True. I'm all in favor of a little bit more userfriendliness in man pages
as long as it's not overkill though.

How about:

	-t	Generate a Postscript version of the manpage, intended for
		printing, by using /usr/bin/groff -S -man to format the manual
		page, passing the output to stdout.  The output from
		/usr/bin/groff -S -man may need to be passed through some
		filter or another before being printed.

That way I can do /print in less and still get some useful hint.

I'm no good with {t,g,n}roff and written English, so no patch...

--Stijn

-- 
"Harry, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day,
 give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just let it
 happen. Could be a new shirt at the men's store, a catnap in your office
  chair, or... two cups of good, hot, black coffee. Like this."
		-- Special Agent Dale Cooper, "Twin Peaks"
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