From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Mar 20 12:27:54 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id MAA17955 for freebsd-questions-outgoing; Fri, 20 Mar 1998 12:27:54 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from citytel1.citytel.net (root@citytel1.citytel.net [204.244.99.66]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id MAA17700 for ; Fri, 20 Mar 1998 12:26:57 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from kwoody@citytel.net) Received: from mybsd.net (citytelprct97.citytel.net [204.244.99.128]) by citytel1.citytel.net (8.8.8/8.8.5) with ESMTP id MAA26554; Fri, 20 Mar 1998 12:26:49 -0800 (PST) Received: from mybsd.net (mybsd.net [192.168.0.2]) by mybsd.net (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id JAA01196; Fri, 20 Mar 1998 09:11:34 -0800 (PST) Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 09:11:34 -0800 (PST) From: Keith Woodworth To: MALCOLM BOFF cc: freebsd-questions Subject: Re: man pages In-Reply-To: <199803200714_MC2-3768-EB0F@compuserve.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG 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