[userbinator]

Another way to think about this is, why can't manpages be written more concisely, so that the most common options and syntax are on the first page/"above the fold"?

Here is the 7th edition UNIX manual for comparison: http://cm.bell-labs.com/7thEdMan/bswv7.html

[dredmorbius]

The printed output of the BSD 3.4 manuals for the first UNIX system I used (other than for playing BSD games as a kid) always had a certain fascination for me. Several large 3-ring binders comprising the sections of the manual, Postscript printed from their troff sources.

Note that you can still do this with manpages:

    man -Tps bash > /tmp/bash.ps

Or if you prefer PDF output:

    man -Tps bash | ps2pdf - > /tmp/bash.pdf

... not that this addresses the content of the manpages, as you note. But at least you can decide on the format.