Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!ginosko!uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen From: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr) Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions Subject: Re: How does man know? Message-ID: <751@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> Date: 3 Oct 89 13:33:03 GMT References: <11182@smoke.BRL.MIL> <3559@cbnewsc.ATT.COM> <11204@smoke.BRL.MIL> Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen) Organization: GE Corp R&D Center Lines: 30 man works in a way which is convenient most of the time. I would rather type man | cat >/dev/tty309 on the very rare occasion when I might send output to an unspooled device, but I surely don't want to type man | more three or four times a day to get paged output. I don't want to have to fool with an alias or shell scipt or macro or program or anything else which people suggest as a way to get around it. One of the things I've learned over the years about human interface design is to "let the computer count the beans." In the case of man it makes good human engineering sense the way it works now. Maybe if a few more things worked that way people wouldn't have the false idea that UNIX is unfriendly. Anyone who would like to have to pipe everytime they run man must be really upset that ls eliminated the need to pipe through sort to get a listing of files in order. -- bill davidsen (davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen) "The world is filled with fools. They blindly follow their so-called 'reason' in the face of the church and common sense. Any fool can see that the world is flat!" - anon