How to adjust man page line length
David J. Weller-Fahy
automatically format man pages to 80 columns? I'm looking for a fairly
easy way to do this, or confirmation it would involve internal
gymnastics I may not be willing to perform.
The quick fixes which did not work: I ensured COLUMNS is set in the
environment, I tried pages which did not have a corresponding catman
page, I tried on the console and in X, and I've tried both with my
custom (SC_PIXEL_MODE added) and GENERIC kernels.
I'm running...
#v+
dave@heffalump:~$ uname -a
FreeBSD heffalump.weller-fahy.com 8.1-RELEASE-p2 FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE-p2 #0: Sat Jan 1 10:59:17 CST 2011 ro...@heffalump.weller-fahy.com:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC-SC_PIXEL_MODE i386
#v-
This particular installation is running under Virtualbox 3.2.12 r68302
on Mac OS X 10.6.6.
Admittedly, this is an annoyance rather than a need, but man is it
annoying. Will someone please let me know the simple thing my google-fu
has failed to find?
Regards,
--
dave [ please don't CC me ]
Dan Nelson
> To expand on the question in the subject: How does one tell `man` not to
> automatically format man pages to 80 columns? I'm looking for a fairly
> easy way to do this, or confirmation it would involve internal gymnastics
> I may not be willing to perform.
For FreeBSD-originated manpages, it looks like the line length is taken from
the .ll and .lt definitions in /usr/share/tmac/mdoc/doc-nroff . If you
comment them out, you get the groff default width of 6 inches. I don't know
if groff can pull values from environment variables or the physical TTY.
--
Dan Nelson
dne...@allantgroup.com
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David Kelly
On Jan 17, 2011, at 9:40 PM, David J. Weller-Fahy wrote:
> To expand on the question in the subject: How does one tell `man` not to
> automatically format man pages to 80 columns? I'm looking for a fairly
> easy way to do this, or confirmation it would involve internal
> gymnastics I may not be willing to perform.
Perhaps FreeBSD should look into using man from MacOS X where "man -c"
will do as requested above. Will format to the output device width.
For FreeBSD I suspect the solution involves "man -t" and then studying
how to tell groff(1) to format for one's console rather than the default
Postscript output. "man -t" generates very nice printable man pages.
As for the request not to be CC'ed in reply, put the list address in the
Reply-To: header as I have done here.
--
David Kelly N4HHE, dke...@HiWAAY.net
========================================================================
Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad.
Giorgos Keramidas
> To expand on the question in the subject: How does one tell `man` not to
> automatically format man pages to 80 columns? I'm looking for a fairly
> easy way to do this, or confirmation it would involve internal
> gymnastics I may not be willing to perform.
Set the 'columns' attribute of your tty:
stty columns 60
man xxx
This should do it.
David Kelly
*Should*? You posted without trying it? (I tried, did not work).
Polytropon
>
> On Jan 17, 2011, at 9:40 PM, David J. Weller-Fahy wrote:
>
> > To expand on the question in the subject: How does one tell `man` not to
> > automatically format man pages to 80 columns? I'm looking for a fairly
> > easy way to do this, or confirmation it would involve internal
> > gymnastics I may not be willing to perform.
>
> will do as requested above. Will format to the output device width.
>
> For FreeBSD I suspect the solution involves "man -t" and then studying
> how to tell groff(1) to format for one's console rather than the default
> Postscript output. "man -t" generates very nice printable man pages.
I'd like to mention - although this might not be a full
answer to the OP's initial question - that this is
similarly done when converting manual pages to PS or
PDF output for better printing.
man2pdf.sh:
#!/bin/sh
[ "$1" != "" ] && zcat `man -w $1` | \
groff -Tps -dpaper=a4 -P-pa4 -mandoc | ps2pdf - $1.pdf
This would cause groff to format for A4 paper width.
It's fully possible that a similar approach can be used
for requesting a specific terminal width given in
characters, rather than inches or centimeters (from
a predefined value).
--
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
Giorgos Keramidas
> On Tue, Jan 18, 2011 at 06:11:13PM +0100, Giorgos Keramidas wrote:
>> On Mon, 17 Jan 2011 21:40:38 -0600, "David J. Weller-Fahy"
>>> To expand on the question in the subject: How does one tell `man`
>>> not to automatically format man pages to 80 columns? I'm looking
>>> for a fairly easy way to do this, or confirmation it would involve
>>> internal gymnastics I may not be willing to perform.
>>
>>
>> stty columns 60
>> man xxx
>>
>> This should do it.
>
> *Should*? You posted without trying it? (I tried, did not work).
'Should' as in "I tried it here and it worked". I'm running a recent
CURRENT snapshot, but I don't think this affects the results. What does
'stty -a' show in your terminal? What is your shell's environment
(e.g. the value of COLUMNS)? What is your PAGER? etc.
David J. Weller-Fahy
> man2pdf.sh:
>
> #!/bin/sh
> [ "$1" != "" ] && zcat `man -w $1` | \
> groff -Tps -dpaper=a4 -P-pa4 -mandoc | ps2pdf - $1.pdf
>
> This would cause groff to format for A4 paper width. It's fully
> possible that a similar approach can be used for requesting a specific
> terminal width given in characters, rather than inches or centimeters
> (from a predefined value).
I forgot to mention in the [SOLVED] email - thank you for mentioning the
groff command-line, as it helped in both the initial and final
solutions.
David J. Weller-Fahy
> As for the request not to be CC'ed in reply, put the list address in
> the Reply-To: header as I have done here.
I started to last night, and realized I couldn't devise a simple way to
do so automatically for all lists I subscribe to without keeping a list
of the lists I subscribe to... (other than my mailboxes: one for each
list)... but I haven't devoted much time to it yet.
I have a feeling it will involve a reply-hook, and that others have
already accomplished it, but I'll try another time. For now think of it
as a polite request which, if not complied with, will cause no ill will.