Re: [groff] improve a few terminal renderings of special characters

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi John,

> > The locations vary, e.g. a user's $MANPATH.  Have the user specify
> > it?
>
> That won't help... when I said how "*(NodeJS) shells out to the system
> to locate manpages for display/processing"*, I was mainly referring to
> how Node talks to the system's man(1), asking it where the pages are
> located that address a user-specified topic, etc. Or if the user wants
> to run `apropos` and get a search rolling, it need to know what to run
> / what arguments to pass to locate manpages.. :(

It seems the tail's wagging the dog for that to hold things up.
Implement something that works on a common platform or two and have
user's of others come forward with their solution for their platform.
`Good enough', not perfect.

One approach is to run several attempts of common command and option
combinations until a good exit status with reasonable looking output is
seen, e.g. man(1), whatis(1), apropos(1), whereis(1).  If all those
fail, punt to a simple search of $MANPATH.

-- 
Cheers, Ralph.
https://plus.google.com/+RalphCorderoy