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

[John Gardner]

Thanks. :-) All thinks considered, I'm wondering if I shouldn't just write
my own man(1) implementation in pure JavaScript... I mean, I can't possibly
imagine it to be hard...

On Thu, 30 Aug 2018 at 22:59, Ralph Corderoy <address@hidden> wrote:

> 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
>
>