Hi jkl,
> Carsten Kunze wrote:
> > There are ways to detect the formatter but a manpage must not do
> > this.
>
> Why not? ISTM we'd have better manpages if they weren't constrained
> to the rendering capability of a VT-100 terminal. For example,
> equations or pictures could augment the text, or replace some of it,
> when "printed".
`.if n' and `.if t' are OK since they're available everywhere. And man
pages may already use eqn(1), etc., if they want. man(7) mentions the
first line being `\" p' to indicate pic(1) is required, for example.
It's up to those preprocessors to produce output that will have a go at
a good representation given the limitations, and for the author not to
strain them and to keep the alternatives on a par.
$ p="`printf '%s\n' .PS down box line box right \
> 'move to last box.e' line line box .PE`"
$ nroff -p <<<"$p" | uniq
┌──────┐
│ │
└───┬──┘
│
┌───┴──┐ ┌──────┐
│ ├──────────│ │
│ │ │ │
└──────┘ └──────┘
$ nroff -p -Tascii <<<"$p" | uniq
+------+
| |
+---+--+
|
+---+--+ +------+
| +----------| |
| | | |
+------+ +------+
$
--
Cheers, Ralph.
https://plus.google.com/+RalphCorderoy
