Re: [Groff] Compression support for files?

[Ted Harding]

On 17-Jul-2014 20:05:17 Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
> Huhu Keith,
> 
> Keith Marshall <address@hidden> wrote:
>  |On 17/07/14 12:13, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
>  |> Keith Marshall <address@hidden> wrote:
>  |>|I consider this to be a regression.
>  |> 
>  |> The last Windows i've seen anything of other than the browser
>  |> window in an Internet Café was 95B (with Plus package).
>  |
>  |And what, exactly, has this to do with the subject?  It's 100%
>  |irrelevant to your patch, and completely off-topic.
> 
> but wait a moment; will you agree that Uschi Obermaier really had
> two beautiful and adorable breasts?

Well, I certainly agree that she had two (which seems to be a valid
answer in terms of the logic of your question ... ).

> [the rest deleted]

I have been silently following this discussion, to see where it
might lead. By now, I am going to strongly suggest that it leads
nowhere!

As far as Unix/Linux are concerned, their beauty, simplicitly
and reliability, and above all their flexibility, depend on
the fact that different aspects of a program's functionality
for a specific purpose are delegated to components of the
program's software suite: In the words of the Founding Fathers,
each compenent does one thing, and does it well!

But that is with reference to the specific purpose of the program,
which in the case of troff is the production of well-laid-out
pages -- a task which has many aspects.

But decompressing files stored in compressed format on disk is
not one of these aspects. If it is desirable, then let it be
done by the operating system, independently of the program
(i.e. independently of troff). This must be possible, for a
suitable configuration of the operating system, if it is
desired and if suitable utility programs/routines are available
for the operating system.

When a program needs a file, and transmits a call for it to
the operating system, and the operating system in turn finds
that it is a compressed file, then let the operating system
decompress it and pass it back undompressed to the program.

Such tasks have nothing whatever to do with troff, and at many
points in the discussion is has appeared that making them part
of troff would introduce complications and potential diasters.

I therefore vote against this idea!

Of course there are already some programs which do the decompressing
on their own account. If 'man' finds a gzipped man-page, it will
unzip it. Also, 'less' (depending on its configuration file) will
do the same. But the function of such programs is simply to present
the plain text to the user, and nothing else. They have one simple
task, and in essence their code is correspondingly simple.

Even so, I have found that (with unzipping enabled) 'less' can make
a horroble mess, or crash (even with files are simply plain text).
For this reason, I (long ago) disabled this facility in my config
file!

Just a comment! (And I have also just seen Keith's latest response,
which arrived while I was writing this).

Best wishes to all,
Ted.

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E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <address@hidden>
Date: 17-Jul-2014  Time: 23:07:49
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