Re: [Groff] Unix Man Pages

[Werner LEMBERG]

> It would be cool to have a switch / environment variable to groff
> that would disable hyphenation permanently, actually; I'd love to be
> able to have a switch for man(1) that could reliably render man
> pages unhyphenated, without having to rely on pages not to fiddle
> with the setting. (It seems not uncommon for man pages to bracket
> text with .nh and .hy requests.)

Four possibilities:

  . A request could be added which generally controls hyphenation,
    i.e., `.hyphenation 0' would disable .nh and .hy completely.  This
    has been already discussed a longer time ago on this list.

  . As mentioned in another mail, a simple redefinition of `.hy'
    should do the trick also.

  . Switching to a different language without hyphenation patterns
    is another possibility to disable hyphenation.  Possibly the
    least reliable solution.

  . Finally, specific to man, the same mechanism as with ms can be
    used: If register `HY' is defined, use this value for hyphenation.
    Actually, I've just implemented this.


     Werner