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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