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Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2011 20:39:58 +0100
From: Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de>
To: questions@freebsd.org
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In-Reply-To: <8162039A-6C07-4C88-928C-AAB4DD0FFCFE@hiwaay.net>
References: <20110118034037.GF90952@weller-fahy.com>
	<8162039A-6C07-4C88-928C-AAB4DD0FFCFE@hiwaay.net>
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Cc: David Kelly <dkelly@hiwaay.net>
Subject: Re: How to adjust man page line length
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On Tue, 18 Jan 2011 06:48:13 -0600, David Kelly <dkelly@hiwaay.net> wrote:
> 
> On Jan 17, 2011, at 9:40 PM, David J. Weller-Fahy wrote:
> 
> > To expand on the question in the subject: How does one tell `man` not to
> > automatically format man pages to 80 columns?  I'm looking for a fairly
> > easy way to do this, or confirmation it would involve internal
> > gymnastics I may not be willing to perform.
> 
> Perhaps FreeBSD should look into using man from MacOS X where "man -c"
> will do as requested above. Will format to the output device width.
> 
> For FreeBSD I suspect the solution involves "man -t" and then studying
> how to tell groff(1) to format for one's console rather than the default
> Postscript output. "man -t" generates very nice printable man pages.

I'd like to mention - although this might not be a full
answer to the OP's initial question - that this is
similarly done when converting manual pages to PS or
PDF output for better printing.

man2pdf.sh:

	#!/bin/sh
	[ "$1" != "" ] && zcat `man -w $1` | \
	groff -Tps -dpaper=a4 -P-pa4 -mandoc | ps2pdf - $1.pdf

This would cause groff to format for A4 paper width.
It's fully possible that a similar approach can be used
for requesting a specific terminal width given in
characters, rather than inches or centimeters (from
a predefined value).


-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...