man pages are not displayed correctly

[mathematatin]

Many man pages are not displayed correctly. For example, "man bash" or "man 3 printf" do not display correctly.

If I do "man 3 printf" and copy/paste the output (below), the output looks normal, but it does not look normal in my terminal screen! It is totally messed up!

This just started after I upgraded from Ubuntu 15.04 to 15.10. I have been using Ubuntu for years, and I have never had any problem with the display of the man pages until now.

I took a screenshot of my terminal page to show how it looks and attached it along with the man debug output.

Copy/paste output snippet:

PRINTF(3) Linux Programmer's Manual PRINTF(3)

NAME
       printf, fprintf, sprintf, snprintf, vprintf, vfprintf, vsprintf, vsnprintf - formatted output conversion

SYNOPSIS
       #include <stdio.h>

       int printf(const char *format, ...);
       int fprintf(FILE *stream, const char *format, ...);
       int sprintf(char *str, const char *format, ...);
       int snprintf(char *str, size_t size, const char *format, ...);

       #include <stdarg.h>

       int vprintf(const char *format, va_list ap);
       int vfprintf(FILE *stream, const char *format, va_list ap);
       int vsprintf(char *str, const char *format, va_list ap);
       int vsnprintf(char *str, size_t size, const char *format, va_list ap);

   Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):

       snprintf(), vsnprintf():
           _BSD_SOURCE || _XOPEN_SOURCE >= 500 || _ISOC99_SOURCE || _POSIX_C_SOURCE >= 200112L;
           or cc -std=c99

DESCRIPTION
       The functions in the printf() family produce output according to a format as described below. The functions printf() and vprintf() write output to stdout, the standard output stream; fprintf() and vfprintf() write
       output to the given output stream; sprintf(), snprintf(), vsprintf() and vsnprintf() write to the character string str.

       The functions snprintf() and vsnprintf() write at most size bytes (including the terminating null byte ('\0')) to str.

       The functions vprintf(), vfprintf(), vsprintf(), vsnprintf() are equivalent to the functions printf(), fprintf(), sprintf(), snprintf(), respectively, except that they are called with a va_list instead of a variable
       number of arguments. These functions do not call the va_end macro. Because they invoke the va_arg macro, the value of ap is undefined after the call. See stdarg(3).

       These eight functions write the output under the control of a format string that specifies how subsequent arguments (or arguments accessed via the variable-length argument facilities of stdarg(3)) are converted for
       output.

...

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 15.10
Package: man-db 2.7.4-1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.2.0-34.39-generic 4.2.8-ckt4
Uname: Linux 4.2.0-34-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.19.1-0ubuntu5
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: Unity
Date: Wed Mar 23 20:25:16 2016
InstallationDate: Installed on 2015-06-11 (286 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 15.04 "Vivid Vervet" - Release amd64 (20150422)
SourcePackage: man-db
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to wily on 2016-03-17 (6 days ago)

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

It looks to me as though either the pager or the terminal emulator is omitting anything in bold, or (perhaps more likely) rendering it in black-on-black so that it's invisible. My money would be on the terminal emulator. Which terminal emulator are you using?

[mathematatin (nintendo-thomas)]

I'm using GNOME terminal.
thomas@my-work-computer:~$ gnome-terminal --version
GNOME Terminal 3.16.2

[Egmont Koblinger (egmont-gmail)]

Go to Profile Preferences -> Colors. Do you have "Bold color" set to black by any chance?

[mathematatin (nintendo-thomas)]

Yep, it looks like that was it. Black was set to bold.

I didn't change my profile preferences so why would I think the problem would lie there?. The upgrade to 15.10 did something to my preferences. At least now I know to investigate the preferences before opening a ticket.

Thanks for your help!