Re: Fw: [Groff] [groff/patch] transparent gzip

[Colin Watson]

On Sun, Aug 25, 2002 at 11:12:26AM -0700, Meg McRoberts wrote:
> --- Alejandro_L?pez-Valencia <address@hidden> wrote:
> > If you really want speed and have the disk space, short-circuit the
> > typesetting step storing all manual pages as typeset output.
> 
> Just a sideways thought, but it seems to me that we should be modifying
> the man command so it can read HTML-formatted man pages.

If you mean formatting into HTML on the fly, that sounds like 'man -H'
to me. :) (man-db only)

If you mean reading preformatted HTML, hmm. The FHS catman directory
structure is such that, as well as having /var/cache/man/cat1 etc. for
preformatted text, you could also have /var/cache/man/html1 etc. for
preformatted HTML. I haven't got round to implementing this, but it is
in principle possible and I'll think about it ...

I think it will always require a special switch, though - people
(including me) are very conservative about how they want the man command
to behave, and expect it to use $PAGER by default rather than
automatically going off to a browser.

> When releasing a product, it's good to build the HTML so the doc can
> be posted on the web, perhaps searchable along with all the other doc
> for the product, so if man can use the HTML files, you don't have to
> do a separate build of the man pages into ASCII for man to read.

Wouldn't it be better to install only the troff source, and generate the
HTML from that in your daily web site build or whatever?

-- 
Colin Watson                                  address@hidden