Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!ginosko!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!uflorida!haven!adm!smoke!gwyn From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn) Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions Subject: Re: How does man know? Message-ID: <11204@smoke.BRL.MIL> Date: 1 Oct 89 00:54:48 GMT References: <11182@smoke.BRL.MIL> <3559@cbnewsc.ATT.COM> Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn) Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD. Lines: 18 In article <3559@cbnewsc.ATT.COM> gregg@cbnewsc.ATT.COM (gregg.g.wonderly) writes: >The best example is printing manual pages. My manual program does >NOT provide a printing feature. Instead it provides the capability >to return the path to the manual pages so that nroff/troff/whatever >can be used to format it. Jesus, what's the difference between formatting a manual page to a terminal and to a printer? You can't even tell whether I'm using my terminal window as a port to access an attached printer or not. I may also be using a Braille terminal, and would disappreciate pagination. There are far more possible environments than you can anticipate, which is why you should not hard-wire in limiting environmental assumptions. By catering to obsolete technology as your assumed "common case" and insisting that better uses of the software will have to be accommodated by additional programming effort, you're providing a powerful disincentive to improve the computing environment!