Re: formatting man pages in email (was: Assignment to RO variable)

[Phi Debian]

I find it usefull and keep it :-) Thanx tons.

      readonly [-aAf] [-p] [name[=word] ...]
>               The  given  names are marked readonly; the values of these
> names
>               may not be changed by subsequent assignment.  If the  -f
>  option
>               is  supplied,  the  functions  corresponding to the names
> are so
>               marked.  The -a option restricts the variables  to  indexed
>  ar‐
>               rays;  the  -A option restricts the variables to associative
> ar‐
>               rays.
>



On Wed, Aug 16, 2023 at 8:06 AM G. Branden Robinson <
g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> wrote:

> At 2023-08-15T23:24:31-0500, Dennis Williamson wrote:
> > From man bash:
> >
> > readonly [-aAf] [-p] [name[=word] ...]
> >               The given names are marked readonly; the values of these
> > names may not be changed by subsequent assignment.  If the -f option is
> > supplied, the functions
> >               corresponding to the names are so marked.  The -a option
>
> That man page quotation came out somewhat awkwardly.
>
> I often find myself quoting man pages in email, so I have a shell
> function for this scenario.  I call it "mailman", fully aware that
> that's also the name of mailing list manager.  (Even if I ran it, I
> wouldn't ever do so at an interactive shell prompt, because it's a
> daemon.)
>
>     mailman () {
>         local cmd= opts=
>         case "$1" in
>             (-*)
>                 opts="$opts $1"
>                 shift
>                 ;;
>         esac
>
>         set -- $(man -w "$@")
>         cmd=$(zcat --force "$@" | \
>             grog -Tutf8 -b -ww -P -cbou -rU0 -rLL=72n -rHY=0 -dAD=l)
>         zcat --force "$@" | $cmd | less
>     }
>
> This relies upon man-db man(1)'s `-w` option to locate the requested
> pages (and it does the right thing if you specify file names, not just
> page topics).
>
> It also uses grog(1), much improved in groff 1.23.0 (released 5 July),
> to figure out which preprocessor(s) and macro package the document
> needs.
>
> I'll walk through those groff options.
>
> * `-Tutf8` formats for a UTF-8 terminal.
> * `-P -cbou` passes options to grotty(1) to turn off all ISO
>   6429/ECMA-48 escape sequences, _and_ all overstriking sequences; their
>   formatting effects won't come through in plain text email anyway.
> * `-rHY=0` turns off hyphenation.
> * `-rLL=72n` sets the line length to 72 ens (character cells), which
>   helps prevent ugly line wrapping.
>
> Two options are new groff 1.23 features.
>
> * `-rU0` turns off hyperlink support, so that any URIs in the man page
>   will be formatted as text.  This is a new groff 1.23.0 feature.
> * `-dAD=l` turns off adjustment (the spreading of output lines).
>
> Two more options are ones I use, but maybe only maintainers of man pages
> want them.
>
> * `-b` produces backtraces for any formatter warnings or errors.
> * `-ww` turns on all formatter warnings.
>
> I hope people find this useful.
>