Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!calvin.spp.cornell.edu!richard
From: richard@calvin.spp.cornell.edu (Richard Brittain)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re: man(1) for MSDOS?
Message-ID: <1990Feb4.015412.26163@calvin.spp.cornell.edu>
Date: 4 Feb 90 01:54:12 GMT
References: <1990Feb1.175125.922@usenet.ins.cwru.edu> <1456@raybed2.UUCP> <19482@mephisto.UUCP>
Reply-To: richard@calvin.spp.cornell.edu (Richard Brittain)
Organization: Cornell Space Plasma Physics Group
Lines: 40

In article <19482@mephisto.UUCP> scott@kong.UUCP (Scott Coulter) writes:
>In article <1456@raybed2.UUCP> rgc@raybed2.UUCP (RICK CARLE) writes:
>>In article <1990Feb1.175125.922@usenet.ins.cwru.edu>, marshall@alpha.ces.cwru.edu ( ) writes:
>>> 
>>> 	I was wondering if there was a program which will operate on UN*X-
>>> style man(1) pages and print them, readably, on the page? ...
>>
>> [response recommending "help" or "rbhelp" for MS-DOS]
>
>This is the second response of this form I've seen.  Now, I'm not certain
>of this, but: Do y'all suppose that the original poster has some files
>which are *already in Unix man(1) format*?  I have a few myself that I would
>like to be able to view/print on my PC.  Is this just too obvious, or did
>I misread the original request?
>

  To add a couple more points to my previous posting: 
- I have investigated several pd *roff clones, and all worked to some extent,
but were weak on macros - none actually ran the standard -man macros
correctly and so I gave up on the idea of using regular unformatted man pages.
I presume the commercial *roff's can do it correctly (for a large price)

- I use an MSDOS port of LESS by Mark Nudelman as my PAGER, and this translates
nroff-style bold/underline correctly, so I format the pages on the unix
box that I use at work, and download the formatted files.  Any nroff program
used in a man(1) type of utility will need to be able to pipe into
something with this capability.  An alternative would be more like a
troff that output escape sequences for bold/underline etc., for an ansi 
screen driver.

Incidentally, this is an MSDOS port of less v 123 (the latest public release)
that I've also had ready for release for a few weeks, waiting for c.b.i.p.
It does everything in the unix version, plus a few bells and whistles for
ibm pc's.


Richard Brittain,                   School of Elect. Eng.,  Upson Hall   
                                    Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853
ARPA: richard@calvin.spp.cornell.edu	
UUCP: {uunet,uw-beaver,rochester,cmcl2}!cornell!calvin!richard