man -t to lpr (man flamed)

[karron at MCIRPS2.MED.NYU.EDU]

Jim Simms (sims at enh.nist.gov) writes:

>I have recently discovered the -t option to man, for typesetting
>man pages and sending to a printer. I am running 3.3.1 and using
>lpr rather than lp, hence the problem. man -t sends to lp; I
>want to be able to send to lpr. Anyone know how to do this?
>According to the man page, *.z files are unpacked using pcat
>and then sent to the named printer. Presumably there is more
>processing than that going on. If I knew exactly what man does,
>I could write a small script to do the job.

I don't know how to fix the man binary.

I also don't know why sgi (or ATT) made the man program into a compiled
binary, leaving us without the source.  In the old days the man command was a
script that could be fixed/hacked to local taste.  I think that the lack of
man page sources, and the inability of the man system to format man pages
without nroff, and the whole catman compiled man page system is an attempt on
the part of ATT to limit access of users to unix and protect its distribution
from local disturbance.  This is entirely contrary to the sprit of unix, and I
have complained to sgi to look into ways it can open up the man system
so that you can directly use it for what it was intended,
not as a barrier to protect the ATT distribution.

If there was an additional material that sgi should put in the 4Dgifts, AWF,
TeX (binarys), and the "Man" system (even a local shell script) are my
nominations.

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