Interestingly enough the problem disappears with a mono font.

I suspect that troff is inserting such tabs instead of spaces when it thinks they are the same. Indeed libframe (as far I could understand from the manual and the sources) properly handles such variable width fonts.

Looks like I've to inform troff about the glyphs sizes... but how?

Giacomo

2015-03-04 17:13 GMT+01:00 Giacomo Tesio <giacomo@tesio.it>:

Hi, I've just installed a compact sans font (from http://input.fontbureau.com/ ) and manual pages started to look broken.

As you can see in the screenshot (man 2 control), there are white spaces that looks like tabs in the middle of the text with apparently no reason.
Even in the troff source (why the hell we still use troff for manual pages? :-D) I can see no command that explain this behaviour.

Any tip to fix them?

Giacomo