On Fri, Oct 01, 2021 at 12:24:50PM -0400, Gene Heskett wrote: > With the man markup subtracted, so what we save is exactly what we see.
If you want to reproduce what you see when you type "man bash" (just as an example), you would need to *retain* the "man markup", not subtract it. So, right off the bat, the question is confusing me. What is it you're actually trying to do here? Do you want to store Debian's man pages in files, move them to another platform (say, Microsoft Windows) and view them there? If you're not moving the files across systems, then I don't see the point. If you want to see the same result again, just run "man bash" again. Yes? The man page isn't going anywhere. Unless... maybe... are you planning to remove a package, but you want to keep its man pages around, so you can read them despite the package being removed? One way to do that would be to read the man pages on Debian's web site. Or, of course, you could also copy the files out of /usr/share/man/ into your home directory, and then run the man command on them as files: unicorn:~$ cp /usr/share/man/man1/ls.1.gz . unicorn:~$ man ./ls.1.gz This works perfectly well. Note that the ./ matters. If your goal isn't one of these things, then I'm quite confused. Please give us some more background information about what you want.