Re: [Groff] Unix Man Pages

[Colin Watson]

On Mon, Mar 10, 2003 at 06:17:54AM -0800, J Robinson wrote:
> --- Ralph Corderoy <address@hidden> wrote:
> > Hi John,
> > > So there is no way to reliably turn off hyphenation in manpages?
> > > (You can do this trick: "(echo .nh; cat /path/to/manpage.1) |
> > > nroff ..." as Ralph Corderoy suggested, but it can be unset in the
> > > troff source?
> > 
> > ...  I later suggested to Colin redefining the `hyphenation on'
> > command so it does nothing.
> > http://ffii.org/archive/mails/groff/2003/Mar/0023.html
> > That way, you turn it off with the echo, define the `turn on'
> > command to do nothing, and if the man page attempts to turn it on
> > itself it won't happen.
> 
> I looked at the link you give above, where you say "Can't a more
> robust version of my `echo .nh' redefine .hy to do nothing?". Can you
> give me a concrete example of a more robust version of 'echo .nh'?
> Being a troff/nroff/groff newbie, I'm not sure what you mean by that.

Try putting this at the start of your input stream:

  .nh
  .de hy
  ..

> Also, is there a way to set the line width for manpages (independent
> of the terminal actually used?)

Yes, with groff 1.18 use the -rLL and -rLT options documented in
groff_man(7). man-db does this automatically based on the terminal size,
with the MANWIDTH environment variable overriding that.

Cheers,

-- 
Colin Watson                                  address@hidden