Rendering a manpage

This is more of a general unix hint, that is not really MacOS X specific.

If you have a manpage that you want to look at, that is not in $MANPATH, (Something that got installed by hand into a custom directory, for example something that was built and installed using
./configure –prefix=/opt/packagename && make install ), yet you know where it is (for example because you did run /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb as root at least once since and now can use locate), you can use nroff to render the man page into text:

stany@gilva:~[12:06 AM]$ ls -la /opt/gnu/man/man6/figlet.6 
-r--r--r--   1 root  501  21054 Sep  3 17:41 /opt/gnu/man/man6/figlet.6
stany@gilva:~[12:06 AM]$ nroff -man /opt/gnu/man/man6/figlet.6 | head -20
FIGLET(6)                                                            FIGLET(6)



NAME
       FIGlet - display large characters made up of ordinary screen characters


SYNOPSIS
       figlet [ -cklnoprstvxDELNRSWX ] [ -d fontdirectory ]
              [ -f fontfile ] [ -m layoutmode ]
              [ -w outputwidth ] [ -C controlfile ]
              [ -I infocode ] [ message ]


DESCRIPTION
       FIGlet prints its input using  large  characters  (called  ``FIGcharac-
       ters'')made  up  of  ordinary  screen  characters (called ``sub-charac-
       ters'').  FIGlet output is generally reminiscent of the sort of  ``sig-
       natures''  many people like to put at the end of e-mail and UseNet mes-
stany@gilva:~[12:06 AM]$