Hi jkl, > > man pages don't really need expressive typography. > > Man pages are constrained by xterm. A better display system would > invite tables, graphs, equations, and links.
I don't think they are. Or they didn't used to be. It was common to see man pages with `.if n' and `.if t', with the troff presenting the same data in better form, e.g. ASCII art versus pic(1). man pages used to be commonly printed and high-quality output desired, screen devices were glass TTYs, and Sun would ship printed paper man pages in folders. I still check the PDF of a man page I alter as it shows flaws that grotty(1) can't. Cheers, Ralph.