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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!spool.mu.edu!newspump.sol.net!news-peer.gsl.net!news.gsl.net!swrinde!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!lll-winken.llnl.gov!taco.cc.ncsu.edu!rdkeys From: rdkeys@unity.ncsu.edu (Bob Keys) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: How to format man pages to lpr --- reasonably? Date: 11 Oct 1996 17:57:45 GMT Organization: North Carolina State University Lines: 52 Message-ID: <53m1qp$3vq@taco.cc.ncsu.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: cc05du.unity.ncsu.edu After some hair pulling, I finally got my printer set up to where it works. Thanks to the gentleman that responded to me previously, although I had to print out a 350 page manual the hard way, after downloading it from the archives and then passing it through a dos box elsewhere, to get the output printed..... all to find out that I just could have: cat <filetoprint> > /dev/lpt0 to get the handbook.ascii to print. Hint.... for us unix dummies, a simple one or two liner in the readme somewhere that ``you can get an emergency simple minimal printout of the handbook in ascii in /usr/share/docs/handbook.ascii using the command `cat handbook.ascii > /dev/lptN' where N is the lpt port. Also, the handbook.ascii should be included as part of the distribution, as well as the handbook.ps. Html'ing my way to fortune is not an appropriate solution. A simple dummies hard copy is much better. Endo my pet peeve for the day. Another question.... I would like to print out manual pages on a postscript printer. What is the best way to do that using man or groff? I was trying: man <manpage> | a2ps | lpr but that did not work very well at all. man <manpage> | a2ps -1 -a -i -m -p | lpr was better but still had bad fits with the backspace and underscores from the man pgm. I can't seem to find any more options that should properly pass manpages through a2ps. I would have thought that the -i and -m options would have taken care of that. Perhaps an intermediate filter of some sort is required? If groff were used, I would expect something like: zcat /usr/man/man1/man.1.gz | groff -man | lpr to work, but it doesn't. man -t etc...., but it also blew up and exited with the signal 11, below. Instead it exits /kernel:pid2529(lpd),uid0:exited on signal 11. Yet manually groffing the page >man.1.ps and catting the file > /dev/lpt0 does work. Any ideas as to what is causing the signal 11 exit? Any suggestions for formatting manual pages to a postscript printer? Any pointers are appreciated. Almost there..... Thanks..... Bob Keys, rdkeys@unity.ncsu.edu