Date: Mon, 19 May 2003 20:22:48 +1000 (EST) From: Andy Farkas <andyf@speednet.com.au> To: Ruslan Ermilov <ru@freebsd.org> Cc: current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: man(1) oddity - was: HEADS UP: bzip2(1) compression for manpages... Message-ID: <20030519192357.O93323-100000@hewey.af.speednet.com.au> In-Reply-To: <20030519081817.GA1035@sunbay.com>
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On Mon, 19 May 2003, Ruslan Ermilov wrote:
> On Mon, May 19, 2003 at 11:01:00AM +1000, Andy Farkas wrote:
> > On Fri, 16 May 2003, Ruslan Ermilov wrote:
> > > On Fri, May 02, 2003 at 12:09:02PM +1000, Andy Farkas wrote:
> > > >
> > > > As a normal user, the "Formatting page, please wait..." message never
> > > > appears, whereas it does for root.
> > > >
> > > > IMHO this is a mild POLA violation.
> > > >
> > > For a normal user, man(1) no longer creates the catpages.
> > > This is still being revised (by me).
> >
> > It still has to format the page. A user should be told this regardless if
> > she is the superuser or not. ATM, only root gets a message.
> >
> Not quite. When catpages are created by man(1), the user is
> displayed the text only after the whole catpage was created.
> This can take some considerable time on large manpages and
> slow machines.
This is my point. A normal user isn't told whats happening anymore:
$ sysctl -a | grep kern.version
kern.version: FreeBSD 5.1-BETA #4: Sat May 17 14:23:21 EST 2003
$
$ find /usr/share/man/ -name "ppp.8*"
/usr/share/man/man8/ppp.8.gz
$
$ /usr/bin/time man ppp > /dev/null
***user waits here***
11.57 real 11.35 user 1.26 sys
$
$ su -
Password:
#
# /usr/bin/time man ppp > /dev/null
Formatting page, please wait...***user waits here***Done.
11.75 real 11.64 user 1.23 sys
#
A normal user has to wait staring at a flashing cursor for 11.5 seconds
before *anything* happens, but root is told "Formatting page, please
wait..."
Am I explaining it enough?
> When catpages are not created, the user is
> displayed the text as soon as part of it becomes available
> from the "/usr/bin/groff -S -Wall -mtty-char -man" command,
> subject to the ${PAGER} buffering.
If a catpage already exists, the `formatting` message does not appear
for any user.
--
:{ andyf@speednet.com.au
Andy Farkas
System Administrator
Speednet Communications
http://www.speednet.com.au/
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