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Xman and nroff incompatibility


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. 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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