malformed man pages

[Dan Nelson]

In the last episode (Dec 04), Sagara Wijetunga said:
> Hi FreeBSD community
> 
> We have an issue on Tomahawk Desktop (an upcoming FreeBSD-based distro)
> that all man pages malformed.
> 
> Eg. man tar shows as follows:
> 1mNAME0m
>      1mtar 22m-- format of tape archive files
> 
> 1mDESCRIPTION0m
>      The 1mtar 22marchive format collects any number of files, 
> directories, and

That looks sort of like malformed ANSI escape codes (bold would be "ESC [ 1
m", but the man utilities shouldn't be generating those.  If you run "man 5
tar | hd | head", what do you get?  I get this:

00000000  54 41 52 28 35 29 09 09  09 20 20 46 72 65 65 42  |TAR(5)...  FreeB|
00000010  53 44 20 46 69 6c 65 20  46 6f 72 6d 61 74 73 20  |SD File Formats |
00000020  4d 61 6e 75 61 6c 09 09  09 54 41 52 28 35 29 0a  |Manual...TAR(5).|
00000030  0a 4e 08 4e 41 08 41 4d  08 4d 45 08 45 0a 20 20  |.N.NA.AM.ME.E.  |
00000040  20 20 20 74 08 74 61 08  61 72 08 72 20 2d 2d 20  |   t.ta.ar.r -- |
00000050  66 6f 72 6d 61 74 20 6f  66 20 74 61 70 65 20 61  |format of tape a|
00000060  72 63 68 69 76 65 20 66  69 6c 65 73 0a 0a 44 08  |rchive files..D.|
00000070  44 45 08 45 53 08 53 43  08 43 52 08 52 49 08 49  |DE.ES.SC.CR.RI.I|
00000080  50 08 50 54 08 54 49 08  49 4f 08 4f 4e 08 4e 0a  |P.PT.TI.IO.ON.N.|
00000090  20 20 20 20 20 54 68 65  20 74 08 74 61 08 61 72  |     The t.ta.ar|

The doubled letters are handled by /usr/bin/less and converted to bold
before displaying.  If you get the same hd output as I have above, then we
know that the manpage is fine, and your problem is in /usr/bin/less or your
terminal type is incorrect.  If you see ANSI escape codes in the hd output,
then we know the problem is with the manpage tools.

-- 
	Dan Nelson
	dnelson at allantgroup.com