man pages and tbl

Pavel Tsekov ptsekov at gmx.net
Mon Jan 15 13:25:34 UTC 2007


Hello,

On Sun, 14 Jan 2007, Werner LEMBERG wrote:

> Is there any reason why you don't pipe man pages through tbl?  To be
> more precise, why don't you use the `man' program which normally can
> handle this automatically (this is, recognizing the necessary
> preprocessors based on the first line of the man page)?
>
> If you don't like `man', I suggest that you use something like
>
>  tbl | nroff ...
>
> in `mc.ext.in' (where `tbl' should be `gtbl' on platforms where you
> have `gtroff' instead of `troff').  Always calling tbl should never
> cause problems.

Some time ago I was investigating the internal viewer code
which deals with man pages. I asked myself the same question
and if I remember correctly I found that invoking "tbl" is not
necessary since most processors already invoke it or something
like that. I have to refresh my memory though. Do you have
a specific man page which is not displayed correctly due
the what you describe above ?




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