From owner-freebsd-doc  Thu Dec 13  0:18:36 2001
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Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2001 00:18:30 -0800 (PST)
From: Hiten Pandya <hitmaster2k@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: docs/32676: file(1) formatting nit
To: "Gary W. Swearingen" <swear@blarg.net>
Cc: doc@FreeBSD.org
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hi,
i think we should just hard-code the value of 76/5/4
columns into the man formatter (nroff).. i beleive..

this would save us from a lot of hassle...
but then.. not everyone has a 80 column screen :-)

Thanks,
=Hiten
=<hiten@uk.FreeBSD.org

--- "Gary W. Swearingen" <swear@blarg.net> wrote:
> >  > 
> >  Starting lines with a space is bogus, and causes
> groff(1)
> >  to stop formatting the current line.  There's
> nothing wrong
> >  with some text running of a right margin;
> manpages display
> >  "literal" text exactly as it is shown by a
> program, and the
> >  output of man(1) could be controlled by a pager
> utility
> >  like more(1) or less(1).
> 
> There IS something wrong: pager utilities can't know
> where the
> left margin is (without some AI code) with resulting
> ugly and
> hard-to-read line wrapping and occasional
> trunctation of text
> (as I observe in XEmacs's man file(1) with a
> 80-column X window).
> 
> Man pages should have a convention to represent the
> end(s) of
> wrapped literal lines.  Something like "[\]" or
> "[NL]" or "[wrap]" at
> the end or "[+]" or "[cont]" at the beginning.  I've
> always preferred
> the beginning (ala FORTRAN), but on Unix the end is
> more common.
> 
> But there's not enough literal stuff in man pages to
> spend much time
> worrying about it.
> 
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=====
-Hiten,

Thank You,
Yours Sincerely,
Hiten Pandya,
<hiten@uk.freebsd.org>
<http://www.geocities.com/hitmaster2k>

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