Re: [Groff] groffview shell script

[Colin Watson]

On Sat, Dec 01, 2001 at 04:45:19AM +0100, Bernd Warken wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 30, 2001 at 11:38:02PM +0000, Colin Watson wrote:
> > On Sat, Dec 01, 2001 at 12:22:19AM +0100, Bernd Warken wrote:
> > > I'm using the `man -w' mechanism in groffview 0.2 to get the man-pages.
> > 
> > I'm not at all convinced that that's portable across implementations of
> > man(1), although all the free ones I know of support it.
> 
> Sigh.  Is it at least POSIX?

I don't know about POSIX, but the only option SUSv2 specifies is 'man
-k'.

> If `man -w' isn't available the $MANPATH or some standard path could be
> used.

Yes, you might have to do that, unless you can manage to use 'man -w'
only if it's available. Bear in mind that various systems lay out their
manual pages differently: HP-UX has directories of compressed man pages
like <mandir>/man1.Z/, while IRIX omits the section extension on man
page filenames: at least, that's what the man-db source says, although I
haven't actually checked recently. It requires some care but isn't
impossible.

Are you planning to implement locale-specific manpaths (i.e.
MANPATH=/usr/share/man and LANG=de_DE causes man pages to be looked up
in /usr/share/man/de/man* first), or does that come under the heading of
"more sophisticated searchings"?

> The name `groffview' is quite ok, but it's a bit long.
> Some shortcuts:
> - groview
> - groffiew
> - groffiu
> - groviu
> - grovu
> 
> How about `groffer'?

I like groview, even though it shares a namespace with postprocessors.
You could also call it grogview, since it's doing guesswork.

-- 
Colin Watson                                  address@hidden