Is there a way to avoid Times New Roman? Some of the characters are pretty ambiguous. I remember, back when I used that command, I mixed up an l and a 1 for one of the flags.
Yes, you can choose a default font. You need to change your /etc/man.conf, find the line that starts with TROFF, and add new options. For example, to use Palatino as the default font, you should additionally provide the option `-f P`. Then you'll get this output: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/845567/bash%281%29%20Pal...
And there's an interesting history to that split: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Times_New_Roman#Linotype_relea...