Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 09:11:34 -0800 (PST) From: Keith Woodworth <kwoody@citytel.net> To: MALCOLM BOFF <Malcolm_Boff@compuserve.com> Cc: freebsd-questions <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: man pages Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.91.980320090317.1156E-100000@mybsd.net> In-Reply-To: <199803200714_MC2-3768-EB0F@compuserve.com>
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On Fri, 20 Mar 1998, MALCOLM BOFF wrote: > (This note refers to 2.2.2-RELEASE) > I have been trying to understand how man works in order that I can get some > properly formatted printouts and come up with the following conclusions. > > assuming the command 'man man' is executed then > the following command is executed :- > zcat /usr/share/man/cat1/man.1.gz > this file after decompression is not in *roff format > > assuming that the command 'man -t man' is executed then > the following command is executed > zcat /usr/share/man/man1/man.1.gz | tbl | troff > the compressed file is in *roff format > > This operation by default will use the troff device 'devps' ie postscript > this does not seem to be the case however so I tried executing the command > manually as :- > > zcat /usr/share/man/man1/man.1.gz | tbl | troff -Tascii > > and expected an ascii printable but that didn't give me what I expected. > > Is the command troff working correctly ? Should it be proceeded by 'groff' > ? If your looking for ascii printable I use something I saw on this list a long while back if I want ascii: bash$ man man | col -b > man.txt will give you a nice txt file. Have no idea if this is what you wanted but this makes an ascii txt file that I can load into vi or just cat/more onto screen. Keith To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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