Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!lll-winken!uunet!van-bc!rsoft!frank
From: frank@rsoft.bc.ca (Frank I. Reiter)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: How does man know?
Keywords: more, io redirection
Message-ID: <53@rsoft.bc.ca>
Date: 29 Sep 89 17:55:11 GMT
References: <319@massey.ac.nz> <11170@smoke.BRL.MIL> <592@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> <11182@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Reply-To: frank@rsoft.UUCP (Frank I. Reiter)
Organization: Reiter Software Inc., British Columbia
Lines: 27

In article <592@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen) writes:
>  And guess what? It *is* convenient to have it work that way.

In article <11182@smoke.BRL.MIL> gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn) writes:
>
>No, it isn't.  One can easily add pagination in those cases where it
>is desired, but it's much more difficult to defeat wired-in pagination
>in those cases where it isn't desired.
>
>Consider "man whatever > /dev/tty_printer".  Why should that try to
>paginate?

man is optimized for the usual case.  The authors obviously expected that
the usual case would be interactive use on a terminal but allowed for non-
paginated (non-interactive) use if output was not going to a terminal.

It is TRIVIAL "to defeat wired-in pagination [etc.]"  I don't consider myself
any sort of wizard but it took me only a moment to think of:

man whatever | cat >/dev/tty_printer

for the problem you pose.
-- 
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Frank I. Reiter              UUCP:  {uunet,ubc-cs}!van-bc!rsoft!frank
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