[rescue] My Best Rescue to Date.. Ever

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Richard wrote:

> Perfectly reasonable for writing new man pages, but existing man pages
> that use the format-based tags should still work.  In other words, if
> you provide a troff clone, it should have a compatible set of an
> macros so that 'my-troff-clone -man foo.1' will work.

groff *DOES* provide such macros.

If you have a *valid* man page that doesn't format, you should report it 
as a bug to the groff project.

One thing you need to remember when using a typesetter is that there are 
errors in some UNIX(TM) typesetting documentation, especially regarding 
date and measurement registers.  For example date registers are years 
since 1900, but AT&T man pages say the register is only 2 digits.

Also, not even UNIX(TM) typesetters are always fully compatible with 
each other.

I have a couple of old (1980s) books on nroff/troff that cover issues 
like that, long before groff was written.