Re: an.tmac, .TH: shows the same text twice in the header! Why necessary?

[Dave Kemper]

On 7/22/23, Bjarni Ingi Gislason <bjarniig@simnet.is> wrote:
>   The text "SENSIBLE-TERMINAL-EMULATOR" is output twice in the header,

You've been seeing this for decades and have never noticed it, because
most Unix commands are short and the repetition is unobtrusive.  Try
"man ls", "man grep", "man ssh", "man ascii", "man troff", or any
other common command.  Each man page name gets placed on the top left
and top right of the page.

I agree, for a galumphing command name like
"sensible-terminal-emulator" the repetition is not only overkill but
detrimental, as it overwrites other header fields.

> is once not enough and why?  (Is this necessary(?))

I don't know why other than extremely longstanding tradition.  (Man
pages have been formatted like this for at least 30 years on many
flavors of Unix.)  It doesn't seem necessary, but you'll have to
convince the that's-the-way-it's-always-been brigade.