Subject: Linux-Activists - DOC Channel digest. 93-3-8-6:13
From: "Linux Activists" <[email-masked]>
To: "Linux-Activists" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 8 Apr 1993 15:35:16 +0300

Topics:
	 compressed info?
	 man-pl (man page reader) upgrade

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From: [email-masked] (Steven S. Dick)
Subject: compressed info?
Date: Thu, 8 Apr 1993 08:37:27 +0300

Has anyone made modifications to info to support compression?

I have heard that someone has modified info.el to do this; is there an
equivalent set of modifications to the c/curses based info program?

        Steve
[email-masked]

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From: "James H. Cloos Jr." <[email-masked]>
Subject: man-pl (man page reader) upgrade
Date: Thu, 8 Apr 1993 11:43:21 +0300

Jonathan> I had a problem in such that the many man pages in cat[1-9]
Jonathan> that were not in man[1-9] were not found.

Yes, this is a problem.  SLS is the first *nix distribution I've come
across where only the cat pages were included--everyone else includes
the man pages.

The way Tom wrote the package, if there is no reference in the whatis
databases for the man page you ask for, no attempt is made to look for
stray pages.  This follows standard unix procedure, as if the file is
not mentioned in the whatis database, there is no was for appropos,
etc to find it either.

The main benefits of this system are easy editing (no compiling
needed) of the src, and the fact that it can automatically determine
an appropriate manpath based on the user's $PATH.

At a site where roff src is online for all of the manpages--as it
really ought to be in most cases--the included makewhatis works fine.
If only the catpages are available, the whatis database will not be
buildable.  (If, on the other hand, the cat pages and the whatis
database--both whatis(5) and *dbm(5) formats--are created on, say,
one's desktop system, where the roff src also exists, and then copiesd
only one's laptop, where diskspace is short, everything would work OK.
Until you ran makewhatis(8) on said laptop, that is.

Try getting the src to all of the man pages--see
ftp.cs.unc.edu:/pub/faith/linux--and running makewhatis(8) then.

If you cannot get the nroff src, I recomend the C man system, and the
manpath(1) program, if it is not part of that suite.  My copy is from
SL's A series--I can't say what disk as I installed before Peter
switched to gzip.

I'll post another followup when I get makewhatis(8) to proerly
recognie doc format pages.

-JimC
-- 
James H. Cloos, Jr.	include <std/qotd>
[email-masked]	include <std/disclaimers.h>
[email-masked] 	Snail:  POBox 1111, Amherst, NY 14226-1111
[email-masked] 	Phone:  +1 716 673-1250 (voice only, for now)

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