Printing MAN pages

Stijn Hoop stijn at win.tue.nl
Thu Sep 8 13:48:06 PDT 2005


On Thu, Sep 08, 2005 at 11:46:28PM +0300, Giorgos Keramidas wrote:
> On 2005-09-08 22:32, Stijn Hoop <stijn at win.tue.nl> wrote:
> > 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:
> > > > 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.
> 
> You all know that groff is thirdparty software, right?  We have to take
> this with the groff developers, if the change is ever going to be
> imported in FreeBSD.

Hmm, no I didn't realize that. Guess that's too much work for such a minor
change :(

> Having said that, I'm in favor of making manpages more useful by a
> little verbosity (but not too much).

Especially not too much ;-)

--Stijn

-- 
Help Wanted: Telepath. You know where to apply.
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