Re: Man page customization after 1.23?

[Ronan Pigott]

> Some distributors have overridden this upstream default. As far as I
> know, Debian was the first to do so; Ubuntu inherited it (or perhaps the
> other way around, as the same person has long maintained the groff
> package for both), and then other distributions cargo-culted it into
> their own groff packages.
> 
> This has already stung one distribution, and it came up on this list in
> the past few days.
> 
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff/2023-07/msg00057.html
> 
>> I don't see any corresponding change in
>> https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/packaging/packages/groff.
> 
> I do:
> 
> https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/packaging/packages/groff/-/blob/main/site.tmac

Ah, I see. With this I was able to find more information on the Arch patch
and how it came to be: 
https://felipec.wordpress.com/2021/06/05/adventures-with-man-color/.

>> Yes, I think using a terminfo db is a good direction for groff. I
>> admittedly don't really grok groff all that well but maybe it would be
>> possible for man to change the rendering of man pages by redefining
>> some macros like .B and .I?
> 
> It is absolutely possible. One can redefine these macros in the
> "man.local" file. The usual caveat applies--if you break it, you get to
> keep both pieces. :-O

I think I will look into this.

Thanks for the detailed response, it helped a lot.

Cheers,
Ronan