Description of Problem: In previous versions, the man page would be displayed with an appropriate number of columns to suit the size of the terminal (I'm using an xterm set at 96x32 using X resources, but the same thing happens if I resize manually). Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): [bill@fraser man]$ rpm -q man groff man-1.5j-11 groff-1.18-6 How Reproducible: View any man page in a xterm at other than 80 columns :) Expected Results: For the man page to be displayed at an appropriate width for the xterm. Additional Information: It appears that the command issued by man is trying to set the width as in previous versions, but with the current version of groff it isn't working. I think this may be due to changes in an-old.tmac, but not absolutely sure. However altering the command to issue ".nr LL 96n" instead of ".ll 8.6i" works fine ... Result of "ps auxww" (trimmed): bill 1139 0.0 0.2 3400 748 pts/6 S 18:27 0:00 man cvs bill 1142 0.0 0.3 3808 956 pts/6 S 18:27 0:00 sh -c (cd /usr/share/man && (echo ".ll 8.6i"; echo ".pl 1100i"; /bin/gunzip -c '/usr/share/man/man1/cvs.1.gz'; echo; echo ".pl \n(nlu+10") | /usr/bin/gtbl | /usr/bin/nroff -c -mandoc | less -is) bill 1143 0.0 0.3 3812 1008 pts/6 S 18:27 0:00 sh -c (cd /usr/share/man && (echo ".ll 8.6i"; echo ".pl 1100i"; /bin/gunzip -c '/usr/share/man/man1/cvs.1.gz'; echo; echo ".pl \n(nlu+10") | /usr/bin/gtbl | /usr/bin/nroff -c -mandoc | less -is) bill 1146 0.0 0.4 3824 1076 pts/6 S 18:27 0:00 /bin/sh /usr/bin/nroff -c -mandoc bill 1147 0.0 0.2 1704 612 pts/6 S 18:27 0:00 less -is bill 1151 0.0 0.3 4084 988 pts/6 S 18:27 0:00 groff -mtty-char -Tutf8 -P-c -mandoc bill 1153 1.7 0.7 4900 1800 pts/6 S 18:27 0:00 grotty -c If I rerun the same commands but change the echo command to ".nr LL 96n" it works sort of OK (but the lines actually still wrap :() ,.... and amusingly if I run man in a 80-column xterm I am finding lines wrapping occasionally(!) so something is broken anyway ...
Yeah, I'm seeing the same broken behavior...
*** Bug 80893 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
The debian changelog also documents that setting the line length changed for groff-1.18 and that newer man_db releases do this correctly now. Look in man_db 2.4.1 for "-rLL=" and "-rLT=" settings for newer groff releases. greetings, Florian La Roche