Mon Nov 30 19:58:36 UTC 2015 nroff -man ./acpi_panasonic.4 | col -b > acpi_panasonic_man_page.txt The -man is the macro file to use. col -b gets rid of any special print characters. The file ./acpi_panasonic.4 was decompressed from ./acpi_panasonic.4.gz using gzip -d The file was copied from /usr/share/man/man4/ to /home/paulp/Panasonic and then decompressed. The nroff command was run in /home/paulp/Panasonic.