man pages screwed

[Wendy Palm]

cray unicos /usr/bin/nroff returns a status "2".

Jim Knoble wrote:
> 
> Circa 2001-Apr-16 09:02:52 -0500 dixit Mark D. Roth:
> 
> : On Mon Apr 16 02:44 2001 -0400, Jim Knoble wrote:
> : > Hmm ... wouldn't it be better to actually detect whether the -mdoc
> : > macros were available rather than defaulting to -man for non-BSD
> : > systems?  Most releases of GNU groff have pretty good -mdoc macros and
> :
> : I thought of this as well, but I wasn't sure how portable it was to
> : some of the more esoteric systems which I don't have access to.
> : There's also the problem of avoiding mis-detection; even if groff is
> : installed, the man command on many systems will only invoke the vendor
> : version.
> 
> True; see below.
> 
> : In general, I do prefer manual testing to hard-coded assumptions when
> : it comes to autoconf.  However, the OpenSSH configure.in already has a
> : lot of hard-coded assumptions for many platforms, so that battle has
> : already been lost.  Also, I wasn't too worried about the wrong choice
> : being made, since the --with-mantype option allows the user to
> : manually force the desired behavior.
> 
> True; but it doesn't make sense to me to translate -mdoc to -man by
> default on systems where there's a perfectly good tmac.mdoc.
> 
> : Anyway, if you'd like to take a stab at this nroff test, please feel
> : free to do so.  If it can be done in a reliable way, I'm all for it.
> 
> Okay, here's what i've found from the range of systems i have access to:
> 
>   platform              man formatter   -mdoc works (status works)[*]
>   --------              -------------   ------------------------------
>   sparc-sun-solaris2.5: /usr/bin/nroff  no  (yes)
>   parisc-hp-hpux10.20:  /usr/bin/nroff  no  (yes)
>   mips-sgi-irix6.2:     /usr/bin/awf[+] no  (yes)
>   rs6000-ibm-aix4.1.x:  /usr/bin/nroff  no  (yes)
>   mips-dec-ultrix4.5:   /usr/bin/nroff  no  (yes)
>   alpha-dec-osf3.2:     /usr/bin/nroff  no  (yes)
>   i386-redhat-linux:    /usr/bin/nroff  yes (yes)
>   ________
>   [*] I.e., nroff returns non-zero if -mdoc doesn't work.
>   [+] Yes, really.
> 
> Bearing in mind that i haven't looked at the *really* weird (SunOS-4.x,
> NeXTStep/OpenStep, SCO BrokenServer or UnixWare) or esoteric (DG/UX,
> CrayOS, Reliant, LynxOS, Darwin) platforms yet, nor have i checked
> Cygwin, it looks as if the following is a good first cut:
> 
>   # Allow user to set NROFF if desired.
>   if [ -z "${NROFF}" ]; then
>     for i in nroff awf; do
>       if [ -x /usr/bin/${i} ]; then
>         NROFF=/usr/bin/${i}
>         break
>       fi
>     done
>   fi
>   if [ -z "${NROFF}" ]; then
>     MANTYPE=cat
>   elif ${NROFF} -mdoc ssh.1 >/dev/null 2>&1; then
>     MANTYPE=doc
>   elif ${NROFF} -man ssh.1 >/dev/null 2>&1; then
>     MANTYPE=man
>   else
>     MANTYPE=cat
>   fi
> 
> This isn't much different from what i proposed earlier, except that the
> system nroff (or, in the case of IRIX, awf) is used instead of the
> first nroff on the PATH, and the user can set NROFF in the environment
> if desired.
> 
> Ben, could you check whether this would work on {NeXT,Open}Step?
> 
> Corinna, what should Cygwin do regarding this (probably just ignore it)?
> 
> Anyone who has access to a non-listed platform (or a significantly
> later version of one that is listed), please let us know whether this
> would work there as well.
> 
> --
> jim knoble | jmknoble at jmknoble.cx | http://www.jmknoble.cx/
> (GnuPG fingerprint: 31C4:8AAC:F24E:A70C:4000::BBF4:289F:EAA8:1381:1491)
> 
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-- 
wendy palm
Cray OS Sustaining Engineering, Cray Inc.
wendyp at cray.com, 651-605-9154