[PATCH] man: let the user specify the format command

Alastair Hughes hobbitalastair at yandex.com
Tue Nov 1 19:48:10 UTC 2016


> On Fri, Oct 28, 2016 at 9:16 AM, Alastair Hughes
> <hobbitalastair at yandex.com> wrote:
> 
>> Package: busybox
>> Version: v1.25.1
>> Severity: wishlist
>>
>> The attached patch lets the user configure the command used to format man pages by busybox's man.
>> I'm using heirloom-doctools instead of groff in a toy distro, which doesn't provide gtbl (just tbl) and doesn't work with -Tascii (I use -Tutf8 instead), so I am using this to let me view man pages.
>> I think that it would also be useful if busybox was built without seamless decompression - the command could pipe the man page through gunzip before sending it on.
>>
>> I've tested this by building with the defaults, with a changed command, and without man.
> 
> The "big" man tool uses /etc/man_db.conf to override these.
> 
> I committed a change which allows that to work:
> 
> man: allow nroff and tbl commands be overridden; unmangle writing to files
> 
> Parse this in config files:
> DEFINE col ...
> DEFINE tbl ...
> DEFINE nroff ...
> Add width options to nroff command line.
> Use "tbl", not "gtbl", as default tbl command.
> Export GROFF_NO_SGR=1 and use "col -b -p -x" instead of pager when
> writing to file.
> 
> Please try current git, try making it work for you with suitable
> /etc/man_db.conf,
> let me know if it's not sufficient.

That works fine, thanks!

Alastair Hughes


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