Re: How to adjust man page line length [SOLVED]
On Wed, 19 Jan 2011 22:51:45 -0600, David J. Weller-Fahy dave-lists-freebsd-questi...@weller-fahy.com wrote: * Giorgos Keramidas keram...@ceid.upatras.gr [2011-01-19 02:57 -0500]: On Tue, 18 Jan 2011 12:29:18 -0600, David Kelly dke...@hiwaay.net wrote: On Tue, Jan 18, 2011 at 06:11:13PM +0100, Giorgos Keramidas wrote: Set the 'columns' attribute of your tty: stty columns 60 man xxx *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. Well... that was an interesting night of experimentation. Thanks for the idea about stty (which I didn't know about), because otherwise I might have gone mad (apparently COLUMNS isn't set in the environment of a shell script... which makes sense when one thinks about it). Regardless, I ended up finding two solutions. Nice! I'll check with our groff maintainer(s) to see if they have plans to MFC the latest man/groff stuff. pgpxKqg0Mxboi.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: How to adjust man page line length [SOLVED]
On Wed 19 Jan 2011 at 21:36:19 PST David Kelly wrote: On Jan 19, 2011, at 10:51 PM, David J. Weller-Fahy wrote: [...] That did the job, but made `man -k`, which my fingers find familiar, unusable. I remembered you were running a CURRENT snapshot, so figured I'd check the difference between man in HEAD and 8.1-RELEASE... WOW! The man in HEAD is now a shell script. In ancient times man was originally a shell script. What is old is new again. Is this a consequence of the move to mdocml instead of groff? ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: How to adjust man page line length [SOLVED]
On Thu, 20 Jan 2011 10:02:56 -0800, Charlie Kester corky1...@comcast.net wrote: In ancient times man was originally a shell script. What is old is new again. Is this a consequence of the move to mdocml instead of groff? No, we are still using groff's groff_mdoc(7) package for authoring manpage content. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: How to adjust man page line length [SOLVED]
* Giorgos Keramidas keram...@ceid.upatras.gr [2011-01-20 06:03 -0500]: On Wed, 19 Jan 2011 22:51:45 -0600, David J. Weller-Fahy dave-lists-freebsd-questi...@weller-fahy.com wrote: Regardless, I ended up finding two solutions. Nice! I'll check with our groff maintainer(s) to see if they have plans to MFC the latest man/groff stuff. That would be excellent, thank you! Regards, -- dave [ please don't CC me ] pgpJuNrcD0Jyz.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: How to adjust man page line length
On Tue, 18 Jan 2011 12:29:18 -0600, David Kelly dke...@hiwaay.net wrote: 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 dave-lists-freebsd-questi...@weller-fahy.com 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. Set the 'columns' attribute of your tty: 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. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: How to adjust man page line length [SOLVED]
* Giorgos Keramidas keram...@ceid.upatras.gr [2011-01-19 02:57 -0500]:
On Tue, 18 Jan 2011 12:29:18 -0600, David Kelly dke...@hiwaay.net wrote:
On Tue, Jan 18, 2011 at 06:11:13PM +0100, Giorgos Keramidas wrote:
Set the 'columns' attribute of your tty:
stty columns 60
man xxx
*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.
Well... that was an interesting night of experimentation. Thanks for
the idea about stty (which I didn't know about), because otherwise I
might have gone mad (apparently COLUMNS isn't set in the environment of
a shell script... which makes sense when one thinks about it).
Regardless, I ended up finding two solutions.
First, I created the following shell script.
#v+
dave@heffalump:~$ cat bin/man.sh
#!/bin/sh
mpage=`man -w $1`
tcols=`stty -a | grep columns | awk '{ print $6 }'`
zcat -f `man -w $1` | groff -Tutf8 -man -rIN=7n -rLL=`echo ${tcols} - 3 | bc`n
- | less
#v-
That did the job, but made `man -k`, which my fingers find familiar,
unusable. I remembered you were running a CURRENT snapshot, so figured
I'd check the difference between man in HEAD and 8.1-RELEASE... WOW!
The man in HEAD is now a shell script.
That inspired a second solution: Take the shell script from HEAD, and
install it for my user's use. So, I checked out the man from HEAD.
svn checkout svn://svn.freebsd.org/base/head/usr.bin/man
I installed fakeroot (needed to install the man pages).
The Makefile doesn't honor PREFIX, but does honor BINDIR/MANDIR, so I
used the following command-line to install the man from HEAD.
fakeroot make install BINDIR=/home/dave/usr/bin
MANDIR=/home/dave/usr/man/man NO_MANCOMPRESS=YES
Whoops! The program and man pages installed, but man pages were not
displayed using the number of columns. Apparently there's more to the
modified behavior in HEAD than just the man display program... but the
new man is a shell script so I can modify it.
I applied the following patch.
#v+
--- man.sh.orig 2011-01-19 22:41:34.0 -0600
+++ man.sh 2011-01-19 22:41:33.0 -0600
@@ -891,9 +891,10 @@
search_whatis whatis $@
}
+cols=`stty -a | grep columns | awk '{ print $6 }'`
EQN=/usr/bin/eqn
COL=/usr/bin/col
-NROFF='/usr/bin/groff -S -Wall -mtty-char -man'
+NROFF='/usr/bin/groff -S -Wall -mtty-char -man -rLL=`echo $cols - 3 | bc`n'
PIC=/usr/bin/pic
SYSCTL=/sbin/sysctl
TBL=/usr/bin/tbl
#v-
I installed again, and done!
So, more gymnastics than I would like, but now man uses the current
number of columns. I'll use this method until the new shell script
version in HEAD makes it into the base of a release I'm running.
Thanks to all for the information and inspiration!
Regards,
--
dave [ please don't CC me ]
pgpD8pPdV0bdR.pgp
Description: PGP signature
Re: How to adjust man page line length
* Polytropon free...@edvax.de [2011-01-18 13:44 -0500]: 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. Regards, -- dave [ please don't CC me ] pgp6SA90YtmPq.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: How to adjust man page line length
* David Kelly dke...@hiwaay.net [2011-01-18 07:05 -0500]: 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. Regards, -- dave [ please don't CC me ] pgpR7HMmo3BKz.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: How to adjust man page line length [SOLVED]
On Jan 19, 2011, at 10:51 PM, David J. Weller-Fahy wrote: [...] That did the job, but made `man -k`, which my fingers find familiar, unusable. I remembered you were running a CURRENT snapshot, so figured I'd check the difference between man in HEAD and 8.1-RELEASE... WOW! The man in HEAD is now a shell script. In ancient times man was originally a shell script. What is old is new again. -- David Kelly N4HHE, dke...@hiwaay.net Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: How to adjust man page line length
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. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: How to adjust man page line length
On Mon, 17 Jan 2011 21:40:38 -0600, David J. Weller-Fahy dave-lists-freebsd-questi...@weller-fahy.com 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. Set the 'columns' attribute of your tty: stty columns 60 man xxx This should do it. pgpweCUC8F7Dj.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: How to adjust man page line length
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 dave-lists-freebsd-questi...@weller-fahy.com 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. Set the 'columns' attribute of your tty: stty columns 60 man xxx This should do it. *Should*? You posted without trying it? (I tried, did not work). -- David Kelly N4HHE, dke...@hiwaay.net Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: How to adjust man page line length
On Tue, 18 Jan 2011 06:48:13 -0600, David Kelly dke...@hiwaay.net wrote: 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. 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 - $1.pdf This would cause groff to format for A4 paper width. It's fully possible that a similar approach can be used for requesting a specific terminal width given in characters, rather than inches or centimeters (from a predefined value). -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ... ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
How to adjust man page line length
To expand on the question in the subject: How does one tell `man` not to automatically format man pages to 80 columns? I'm looking for a fairly easy way to do this, or confirmation it would involve internal gymnastics I may not be willing to perform. The quick fixes which did not work: I ensured COLUMNS is set in the environment, I tried pages which did not have a corresponding catman page, I tried on the console and in X, and I've tried both with my custom (SC_PIXEL_MODE added) and GENERIC kernels. I'm running... #v+ dave@heffalump:~$ 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 r...@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 ] pgpuYmTIj89FG.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: How to adjust man page line length
In the last episode (Jan 17), David J. Weller-Fahy said: 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 dnel...@allantgroup.com ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
