printing man pages with groff gives double/triple images

[Tom Mitchell]

On Thu, Jan 15, 2004 at 08:20:01AM -0600, Harry Putnam wrote:

> What is the trick to get a good print job on man pages using groff?
> 
> I'm using:
>   `groff -t -man -Tps filename |lp'
.....
> Another place I see it is like so:
> 
> man cut:
>    SSSYYYNNNOOOPPPIIISSS

The multi strike stuff is how bold characters were printed in the
old days on dumb printers.  Bold and underline were both
generated by backspacing and over striking (or reverse line
feed).  The groff man page hints at this.
                                                                                
       -t     Use /usr/bin/groff -Tps -mandoc to format the manual page, pass-
              ing the output to stdout.  The output from  /usr/bin/groff  -Tps
              -mandoc  may  need  to  be passed through some filter or another
              before being printed.

Check out "col", "colcrt", the below is from the colcrt man page:
 "DESCRIPTION
     "Colcrt provides virtual half-line and reverse line feed sequences for
     terminals without such capability, and on which overstriking is destruc-
     tive.  Half-line characters and underlining (changed to dashing ‘-’) are
     placed on new lines in between the normal output lines."

Printing beautiful man pages (typesetting them) can depend a lot
on the printer, fonts, and font descriptions.  Output languages/formats 
like postscript or DVI help (DVI=DeVice Independent).

Here is a nifty URL.
   http://www.ece.northwestern.edu/CSEL/FAQ/printing_a_man_page.html


-- 
	T o m  M i t c h e l l 
	mitch48-at-sbcglobal-dot-net