Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!neat.cs.toronto.edu!erlebach
Newsgroups: gnu.gcc
From: erlebach@cs.toronto.edu (Beverly Erlebacher)
Subject: Re: g++ 1.36.1 info in troff man format
Message-ID: <90Jan16.225719est.2202@neat.cs.toronto.edu>
Summary: view gnu manuals with unix man(1) command
Keywords: troff texi2roff texinfo man catman
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto
References: <18697.9001151248@uk.ac.keele.seq1>
Distribution: gnu
Date: 17 Jan 90 03:58:11 GMT
Lines: 26

In article <18697.9001151248@uk.ac.keele.seq1> gerry%seq1.keele.ac.uk@NSFNET-RELAY.AC.UK ("G.D.Pratt") writes:
>does anyone have any GNU documentation in troff "man"
>format for online use. ... I am besieged for documentation
>in the absence of manual pages - this is mostly for g++.
>
>So if anyone has look at this, or has a texinfo to man filter,
>would they let me know.

Someone suggested you use texi2roff, which will translate Texinfo to
troff with -ms, -me or -mm macros.  Check out the man(1) and catman(8)
unix commands.  They have the little-known property of formatting text
with your choice of macro package, using the -T option.

Of course, this doesn't give you a unix-style man page, but rather a
gnu-style manual.  The process of extracting the approximately 1% synopsis
suitable for a unix man page from a large gnu manual is an AI problem not
likely to be solved in the foreseeable future.   The two types of document
have different purposes. 

Release 2.0 of texi2roff has been ready for some time.  If I don't get it
out this week, I'll do so after Usenix.  It will be available for ftp on
this machine (neat.cs.toronto.edu [128.100.1.65]) and prep.ai.mit.edu. 
It will also be posted to comp.sources.unix.

Beverly Erlebacher	uunet!utai!erlebach	erlebach@cs.toronto.edu