Date: Wed, 28 Jun 1995 09:22:03 +0300
From: eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il (Eli Zaretskii)
To: djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu, covici AT ccs DOT covici DOT com
Subject: Re: reading man pages under DOS

> Hi.  I would like to be able to read man pages under dos, but 
> the grof70.tgz doesn work (neither the groff nor the grotty work
> correctly), so what can I do.  The author of these is no longer at the
> address listed in the readme file.

There are other ways, as this excerpt from the DJGPP FAQ list says:

4.6   Q: Some docs files are called foo.1 or bar.man or baz.nroff, and
         they seem to be written in some weird format which is very
         difficult to read.  How can I convert them to readable text files?
      A: That weird format is the troff format which is used for
         writing Unix manual pages.  The Unix command ``man'' converts
         them to formatted text files which are usually displayed with a
         program like ``more'' or ``less'' (and here ``less'' is
         considered to be more than ``more'' :-).  The formatted file
         includes bold and underlined letters produced by overtyping using
         Backspace characters.  To format these files, you can choose one
         of these methods:
 
          * Get and install a DOS port of the groff package, or port it
            yourself (a very difficult task).  One port of Groff to DJGPP
            can be found on omnigate.clarkson.edu:/pub/msdos/djgpp/pub.
            (I'm told that groff.exe from this port doesn't work, but
            troff, which you need, does.)
            The latest Groff distribution can be found on the GNU ftp
            archive or any of its mirrors.
 
          * Get and install CAWF, a DOS program which knows about most of
            the troff formatting commands.  CAWF can be found on any
            SimTel mirror.
 
          * Format the file on any Unix machine, and download the results
            to your PC.  Under Unix, typing ``catman -p'' will print the
            commands which are required to do this; you can then run those
            commands on your .1 troff source files.
 
         No matter which of the above methods you chose, you will need
         some kind of browser which understands how to show bold and
         underlined letters instead of backspace-overtyped characters.  I
         suggest to download a DOS port of GNU Less, which uses colors to
         show bold and underlined letters.  You can find it as
         LESSNNNx.ZIP on any SimTel mirror in the textutil directory.
         Another possibility is to get the latest official GNU Less
         distribution which can be compiled out of the box with the
         Microsoft C compiler (but I didn't try to do so).
 
         Another possibility to read formatted man pages would be with an
         Emacs editor, if you use one.  Emacs has a special command to
         read man pages.
 
         Note that, for GNU packages, the man pages aren't always updated
         on a regular basis.  If you need more up-to-date information, see
         the Info files.