Date: Wed, 22 Oct 2008 22:12:23 -0400 From: "Matt Emmerton" <matt@gsicomp.on.ca> To: <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>, "Gonzalo Nemmi" <gnemmi@gmail.com> Subject: Re: man -t odd page size Message-ID: <10BDBC68DA414886A21749B430CCFFC6@hermes> References: <200810222335.26022.gnemmi@gmail.com>
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> On Wednesday 22 October 2008 10:38:40 pm Polytropon wrote: >> Hi! >> >> On Wed, 22 Oct 2008 21:56:20 -0200, Gonzalo Nemmi <gnemmi@gmail.com> >> wrote: >> > Is there an easy way to get man to format the man page using plain good >> > ISO 216 standard A4 page size? >> >> My suggfestion for an attempt would be to first strip any control >> characters from the output of "man -P cat <entry>" and then pipe >> it to an ASCII to PDF converter (a2ps, if I remember correctly); >> this would remove any markups, I know, but would lead to a PDF >> output using the system's default paper size, A4 (I hope). >> >> I know this is not the best idea, but it should be accomplishable >> without many problems. A better idea would be to write a simple >> filter that convert the man page (including formatting characters) >> into LaTeX source and then run it through pdflatex. > > Exactly .. you got it just the way I wanted .. after your explanantion, > the > question _begs_ to be asked: do we, citizens of ISO 216 adopting > countries, > have to walk that cumbersome path in order to get something as simple as > an > ISO compliant document?? > > Shouldn't it be the other way around??? Perhaps, but since the roots of *BSD are in the USA, letter was a sensible default (at the time). Now, if a collection of FreeBSD members from ISO 216 adopting companies wanted to figure out a way to put "default paper size" into some kind of locale option that man (and other tools) could use, then that would go a long way towards reducing the pain. -- Matt
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