man pages and highlighting etc

[Paul Eggert]

pearmana at prl.philips.co.uk writes:

  The problem is that when I type `man command' on the HPs,
  bold and underline work fine, whereas on the Suns it doesn't.

Sun is _still_ using old nroff, which doesn't distinguish boldface.
However, italics should work.  E.g. on my screen (Open Windows 2.0, SunOS
4.1.1, xterm), `man ls' underlines the italicized words.

  In fact, when using something like `man ls' on a Sun, whether in
  Sunview, NeWS, or OpenWindows has no effect either.

Try using xterm.  If you must use Sun's console emulation, try using a
copy of the `sun' termcap entry with the underlining capability
`us=\E[4m:ue=\E[m:' removed.  You may also have to fix the corresponding
terminfo entry.  Removing the underlining capability (which is often
broken) will make your pager fall back on highlighting, which should work.

But why settle for nroff-quality output if you're using OpenWindows?  You
can display PostScript output with

	setenv TCAT '(thack | pageview -mono -) <'
	man -t command

where you can substitute your favorite cat-to-PostScript filter for
`thack'.  The thack filter is available via anonymous FTP from
uunet.uu.net in comp.sources.misc/volume{7,8,10}/thack.*; several such
filters are available, but thack is the simplest.