Xman and nroff incompatibility

[Igor Pechtchanski]

On Sat, 21 Feb 2004, Rodrigo Medina wrote:

> Hi all,
> I am not sure if this is the right list for sending this comment, it
> is more a XFree issue than a cygwin-xfree issue. In any case...
> Since some upgrading long ago, xman stopped functioning properly. It
> does not recognize the escape sequences that, instead, are written
> literally. I have traced the problem to the following. At some point
> the groff package changed the way the nroff script functions. There
> are two kinds of output, old style that use a lot of ^H for underline
> etc., and the new style with the escape sequences.  Xman only
> understand the old style format. In order to obtain the old style
> output one  has to call nroff with the -c option. Xman calls nroff
> without the -c option. The man page of xman claims that in some
> operative systems xman reads /etc/man.config.

FYI, Cygwin man doesn't use /etc/man.config.  I believe the global man
configuration file for Cygwin is /usr/share/misc/man.conf.  I don't know
whether Xman reads that...
	Igor

> It seems that it is not
> true for cygwin, or at least it does not use the NROFF string for
> calling nroff. I have modified the nroff script in order to force
> a -c option. Of course it is not a clean solution. The best thing to
> do is to include in the Xman resources the string it is used for
> calling nroff. If it is already there it should be documented in the
> man page.
> I hope that this comment could be useful.
>
> Rodrigo Medina.

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