MAN pages in nroff format

[Dave Ciemiewicz]

In article <9008191125.aa19008 at VGR.BRL.MIL>, SOFPJF at VM.UOGUELPH.CA
(Peter Jaspers-Fayer) writes:
> Hello,
>       TN3270 (and others) have unformatted MAN pages (nroff format).
> `man man` states that I need the 'Documentor's Workbench' before I
> can use them in usr/local/catman/bla/bla...  Humbug!!  If I could
> just format them once, pack them, and file them in the right place,
> I could do man on them no problem.  I did `man tn3270 > tn3270` on
> a NeXT, packed the result (into a ...z file) on my Iris, and that
> works OK, SO:
> 
> Neither man nor apropos say anything about *roff, other than deroff
> which more clearly states that I need the workbench before I can
> nroff anything.

What release are you using?  The 3.2 and 3.3 releases of the man(1) manual
page contains the following:

      ... locally added manual entries may be pre-formatted "cat" manual
      entries in /usr/catman/local/cat[1- 8lnop] or may be unformatted nroff(1)
      source manual entries in /usr/catman/local/man[1-8lnop].  The unformatted
      manual entries will be processed by neqn(1), tbl(1), nroff(1), and
col(1).
      (The Documentor's Work Bench software option is required to process
      unformatted manual pages.)

The Documentor's Work Bench option contains the programs neqn, tbl, and nroff
referred to in this passage.  It seems to me that a very explicit reference to
nroff has been made.  A reference to nroff is also made in the "SEE ALSO"
section of the man(1) manual page.

Though it may be inferred from the last two sentences that the Documentor's
Work Bench is the software option which contains the needed tools, you are
correct that the containment is not explicit.  This will be remedied.

As for the Documentor's Work Bench requirement for unformatted manual pages,
it is still very true.  If you want to put unformatted manual pages on your
IRIS and have the man command on the IRIS format them, you must have nroff on
that IRIS which implies that you must have the Documentor's Work Bench on
that IRIS.  This is true if you want a solution from Silicon Graphics.

If you format your manual pages on another system and place them in the
manual page tree on the IRIS, you can get around the requirement of
having nroff, as you did.  However, you have placed "formatted" manual pages
in the tree, not "unformatted" manual pages.  Whether we, you, or some other
agent formats them is irrelevant.

The best you can fault the manual page for is not detailing how to format
manual pages on another IRIS for installation on systems which do not have
the Documentor's Work Bench.  This too will be remedied.

							--- Ciemo