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

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Werner,

> I received the following from Emmanuel:
> 
> > You will find enclosed a patch to groff-1.18 providing support for
> > transparent sourcing of gzipped files -- This comes in handy on RH
> > linux where all manpages are gzipped by default, and sometimes
> > source eachother. Patch is 340 lines, and requires zlib
> > (configure.ac untouched though)
> 
> The patch looks fine, thanks, and I think it would be a very valuable
> addition

I use Red Hat 7.2 and find `man fgrep' works just fine despite

    $ zc /usr/share/man/man1/fgrep.1.gz 
    .so man1/grep.1
    $ ls /usr/share/man/man1/grep.*
    /usr/share/man/man1/grep.1.gz

because the man command sorts it out and feeds uncompressed data to
groff.

So is it worth the extra code which the reader has to parse?  (I know
what stdlib routines do without having to look up their definitions.)
And how about .bz2, .lzo, etc.  Isn't it the Unix way to keep this kind
of thing separate?

Just my 2c.


Ralph.