Mail Archives: cygwin/2004/11/23/08:57:30
On Mon, 22 Nov 2004, Raye Raskin wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Igor Pechtchanski" <pechtcha AT XX DOT XXX DOT XXX>
> To: "Raye Raskin" <rayer AT XXXXX DOT XXX>
> Cc: <cygwin AT XXXXXX DOT XXX>
Again, <http://cygwin.com/acronyms/#PCYMTNQREAIYR>. Thanks.
> Sent: Monday, November 22, 2004 6:30 PM
> Subject: Re: Manual page width is fixed and I'd like it not to be
>
> > On Mon, 22 Nov 2004, Raye Raskin wrote:
> >
> > > ----- Original Message -----
> > > From: "Christopher Faylor" <cgf-no-personal-reply-please AT XXXXXX DOT XXX>
> > > To: <cygwin AT XXXXXX DOT XXX>
> >
> > <http://cygwin.com/acronyms/#PCYMTNQREAIYR>. Thanks.
> >
> > > Sent: Monday, November 22, 2004 5:35 PM
> > > Subject: Re: Manual page width is fixed and I'd like it not to be
> > >
> > > > On Mon, Nov 22, 2004 at 06:50:57PM -0500, Aaron Miller wrote:
> > > > > Thanks for the pointer, and I'll ask on the cygwin-xfree list as well.
> > > > > It's not really a query about xterm, though: using a shortcut that
> > > > > starts bash in a standard Windows command-shell which is 100 columns
> > > > > wide, if I ask for a manual page, I still get it formatted to eighty
> > > > > columns. I mentioned xterms since that's what I prefer to use, but
> > > > > it's not by any means a problem exclusive to those.
> > > >
> > > > Ok, you and three or four other people made this point after I blocked
> > > > the subject here because I thought it was xterm specific.
> > > >
> > > > Instead, it isn't even cygwin-specific. All of my man pages are
> > > > formatted to 80 columns on linux, too. If you think about how man
> > > > works, where it caches the formatted output in a separate directory
> > > > it is easy to see why that is the case.
> > >
> > > Dear Christopher,
> > >
> > > There has to be a better way than refusing emails just because
> > > the word xterm is in the body of the message.
> > >
> > > I really don't like doing (granted, just a little) research and
> > > replying to a problem in a effort to help out just to get it
> > > moderated into the bit bucket because someone in power thinks
> > > the subject taints the purity of the cygwin mailing list.
> > >
> > > Assuming this message isn't blocked as well, here is my reply
> > > that was bounced earlier:
> > >
> > > According to the man man page, $MANWIDTH should address your
> > > precise issue, but on my system setting $MANWIDTH has no effect.
> > > I guess this makes it a bug. Either in the doc or the bin!
> >
> > Well, that's not a full bug report, since man uses a cached cat page if
> > it's present. So, unless your system doesn't have the cat directories,
> > you need to run "man -c" to force regeneration of cat pages. That said, I
> > confirm that "MANWIDTH=20 man -c man" still produces an 80-column manpage.
> > But then, hey, it doesn't work on Linux (RedHat 9) either. We must be
> > misreading the man manpage. :-)
> > Igor
>
> I tried man on my SuSE 9.1 Linux and it (1) follows the size of the
> xterm automatically and (2) follows the $MANWIDTH directive as well.
Some more info. The problem is not with man, it's with nroff. Version
1.18.1 of groff (which we have in Cygwin, and which I have on my RedHat 9
machine) seems to ignore the ".ll" directive that man sends it. Version
1.17.2, which comes with RedHat 7.3, works fine. This seems to be an
upstream change in behavior, and not Cygwin-specific. Any further
discussion should probably be taken to a groff list (if there is one).
Hope this helps someone.
Igor
--
http://cs.nyu.edu/~pechtcha/
|\ _,,,---,,_ pechtcha AT cs DOT nyu DOT edu
ZZZzz /,`.-'`' -. ;-;;,_ igor AT watson DOT ibm DOT com
|,4- ) )-,_. ,\ ( `'-' Igor Pechtchanski, Ph.D.
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Lunar eclipse..." -- WCBS Radio Newsbrief, Oct 27 2004, 12:01 pm EDT
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