Re: -man fails to use ANSI commands

[G. Branden Robinson]

Hi Anton,

At 2024-06-13T00:43:01+0300, Anton Shepelev wrote:
> > > Check your environment for variables named "GROFF_SGR"
> > > (a Debianism) and "GROFF_NO_SGR".  Unset them both and
> > > try "groff -man -Tutf8" again.
> >
> > `export | grep -i sgr' finds nothing, unfortunately.
> > Where else can I look for the reason of -man treating my
> > virtual terminal as a printer?
> 
> I forgot whether I reported my solution, and if I did, I do
> not see my answer here, so here it is for the record.  The
> culprit is:
> 
>    /usr/share/groff/site-tmac/man.local
> 
> which has the following:
> 
>    .  \" Debian: Disable the use of SGR (ANSI colour) escape sequences by
>    .  \" grotty.
>    .  if '\V[GROFF_SGR]'' \
>    .    output x X tty: sgr 0
> 
> This means that one must /set/ rather than unset GROFF_SGR
> to restore the normal nroff behavior.

This advice, while still applicable to groff 1.22.4, is becoming stale.
Distributors that introduced the GROFF_SGR Debianism have now started to
withdraw it when packaging groff 1.23.0.

https://salsa.debian.org/debian/groff/-/commit/f0a34f20ff772f692255b7e32a05630c639f75a8
https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/packaging/packages/groff/-/commit/025a63b7e55a24c0a1892045819eef79fdc67873

> See also:
> 
>    <https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=750202>

Ah, yes, that's when Texinfo maintainer Gavin Smith became convinced I
was a moron--because only an idiot wouldn't suspect that there were
distinct environment variables named "GROFF_NO_SGR" and "GROFF_SGR",
with different origins, that affected the same behavior via different
mechanisms.  Good times! 😅

(I managed to remain ignorant of "GROFF_SGR" for something like 20 years
because (1) for much of that time, as the Debian bug report notes, it
was undocumented; and (2) unlike a startling number of people, I lacked
a prurient desire to decorate man page renderings with all the colors of
the ANSI X3.64 rainbow, and certainly not via the exercise of less(1)
features that were _also_, at the time, undocumented!)

Regards,
Branden

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