How are manual pages formatted?

George Robbins grr at cbmvax.commodore.com
Wed Feb 7 19:56:20 AEST 1990


In article <1990Jan31.205915.4709 at gumby.cc.wmich.edu> peirce at gumby.cc.wmich.edu (Leonard J. Peirce) writes:
> What sequence is used to format manual pages on ULTRIX?  Simply using
> nroff -man xxx doesn't seem to work properly.  I don't have sources so
> I can't look for myself but a strings on /usr/ucb/man shows some printf
> formats that look like man is using a sequence of tbl and col followed by
> nroff.

Just to mention the obvious, "man xxxx > foo" also formats the manual pages.
It seems to recognize that the output isn't going to a terminal and do
"hardcopy" formatting.  Of course if you want troff or postscript output,
you have to do it yourself...

-- 
George Robbins - now working for,     uucp:   {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!grr
but no way officially representing:   domain: grr at cbmvax.commodore.com
Commodore, Engineering Department     phone:  215-431-9349 (only by moonlite)



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