Re: Improved manual page for ul(1)

[Jonathan de Boyne Pollard <J.deBoynePollard-newsgroups%NTLWorld.com@localhost>]

Mark Heily:
> The benefit of a separate manpage for TTY-37 information is that any 
> other commands that deal with these control sequences can have their 
> manpages updated to refer to the tty37_control(5) manual.

It's a good idea, and not without precedent, both in the FreeBSD manual 
and older manuals.

The problem is twofold.

The relevant tools don't all agree on what the semantics are.  As noted 
in this manual and in the Stack Exchange answer, less and more don't 
recognize overstriking that ul and colcrt do recognize.  (ul and colcrt 
are right on the basis that what they do is what a real TTY-37 would do, 
and less and more are wrong on that basis.)

And these semantics are extensions to, and even different from, an 
actual Teletype Model 37.  The differences are given in this manual: the 
carriage width is different (and different from some other tools, too -- 
collpr has an 80 column wide carriage, iul a 500-column wide one), 
half-scrolling is very different (and buggy), and the toolset in general 
incorporates (also buggy) wide character capability that simply wasn't 
even an idea for a Teletype Model 37.

Also, I don't want this to be too much of a moving target.  I've already 
done one change.  I want to leave it stable for a little while.  People 
are (I hope) reading it.