Re: [Groff] Problems with man pages in 1.19?

[Werner LEMBERG]

> I just upgraded my O/S to Mandrake and got groff 1.19.
> I have some manpages that formatted just fine on an
> earlier version of troff.

Those manpages still format fine...

> - For the ASCII format, I'm getting a whole bunch of screwy
>   error messages such as:
>
> ../../vsapi/truefiletypes.man:749: warning [p 10, 0.3i, div
>   `3tbd18,5', 0.7i]: cannot adjust line

groff is now more verbose, this is, it reports more (typographical)
glitches.  To suppress all warning messages, modify the `nroff'
variable in `/etc/manpath.config' (or its equivalent -- I don't know
which `man' system you use) and add `-Wall'.

>   and the output has the 3m, 0m, 4m, etc characters spread around

These are so-called `ANSI escapes' (or `SGR escapes') to set text
attributes on TTYs.  Recent versions of the `less' pager program are
able to handle them.  Check the `-R' command line option of `less';
again, you should be able to set this up in the manpath.config file
(look for the `pager' variable).

If this all fails, set the environment variable `GROFF_NO_SGR' to
disable the new format, reverting to the old one (which abuses the
backspace character for formatting).


    Werner