[Groff] Re: manual pages and terminal width

[Colin Watson]

On Mon, Apr 29, 2002 at 01:48:45PM +0300, Ruslan Ermilov wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 27, 2002 at 02:39:36PM +0200, Werner LEMBERG wrote:
> >   . The `man' program should define number registers `LL' and `LT'
> >     instead of setting .ll and .lt directly.
> 
> I think a single `LL' register for both would DTRT.

I agree.

> >   . I will add code to both the man and mdoc macro packages to use a
> >     default value of 78n for the line and title length if LL and LT
> >     are not set (and 6.5i in troff mode).
> 
> That looks acceptable.  But beware that many man(1) distributions have
> an ability to create the so-called "catpages", compiled version of the
> respective manpages.  A catpage serves as a "cache" for future readers
> of the same manpage.  Catpages may be pre-created at install time, or
> created at run-time.  One possible solution to the problem it creates
> is to create/look for catpages only if the respective option to set
> the line length from man(1) was not used.

Indeed. man-db already behaves this way, to make sure sanity is
preserved. I think Andries' man(1) no longer uses cat pages?

-- 
Colin Watson                                  address@hidden