I will look into groff tonight. I did not know about it.  I have seen it
mentioned before, and thought it was some communication program to
understand what dogs are talking about :-).  I got some ink today, so i'll
print out the manpages and read them.

Thanks for the tip Richard

Andrew

-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Rauch [mailto:rkr@rkr.kcnet.com]
Sent: Tuesday, 29 February 2000 4:15 PM
To: Andrew Crossley; fission; netbsd-help@netbsd.org
Subject: RE: Printing


Having read man-pages online, and offline, (in some cases the very same
man-pages) I must say that offline is more pleasant (or rather, that the
printed form is more pleasant to deal with).

Also, beginners may not be comfortable remembering ^Z/fg/bg, and may not
even know about window(1).  They may not have installed the screen package
(which is, in any case, no easier to use than window(1)), and may not have
set up X yet.  (X can be a little intimidating, especially if you use a
computer bundled by some manufacturer and don't really know what video
card they put in it, etc...)  At present, our virtual console stuff is
diabled by default.  Printed man-pages give them the ability to have
multiple displays of man-pages, while still having an active console---and
they have no danger of being unable to remember how to get back from the
printed page to their console.  (Well, not unless they print a LOT of
man-pages...(^&)

People shouldn't feel that it's a rite of passage to print out even a
single man-page.  But man-pages _are_ designed for typesetting, and most
users will at one time or another want to print out a few man-pages.
(Especially lengthy ones, such as the csh man-page, and especially when
the users are just getting to know what UNIX-like systems are like
(``they're like UNIX''...sorry, couldn't resist)...)

(ramble)


BTW, some users may have a PostScript printer (or may have set up
Ghostscript), so you might consider adding a note about using groff to get
some really nicely printed man-pages.  (^&


  "I probably don't know what I'm talking about."  --rkr@rkr.kcnet.com