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- From: rankin@eql.caltech.edu (Pat Rankin)
- Subject: `man' output
- Message-ID: <19AUG199215124595@eql.caltech.edu>
- News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41
- Sender: news@cco.caltech.edu
- Nntp-Posting-Host: eql.caltech.edu
- Organization: California Institute of Technology
- References: <2415@mitech.com> <1992Aug18.091028@mccall.com> <1992Aug18.223322.25145@src.honeywell.com> <1992Aug19.030903.3648@spcvxb.spc.edu>
- Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1992 22:12:00 GMT
- Lines: 30
-
- [previous subject line: "Re: name of VMS product has changed..."]
- In article <1992Aug19.030903.3648@spcvxb.spc.edu>, terry@spcvxb.spc.edu (Terry Kennedy, Operations Mgr.) writes...
- > I just tried flipping into Posix and doing a "man tar" on an idle 8650. It
- > took 15 seconds to get the first line of output, and the screen then updated
- > at a rate of about 1 line per second.
-
- You are encountering two substantial problems with the initial VMS
- POSIX implementation here.
- (1) `man' is implemented as `dcl help vms_posix | more' or some permutation
- thereof. The terminal output from "normal" VMS then has to be translated
- into POSIX terminal output; this conversion slows things down considerably,
- particularly if you've invoked POSIX from the DCL prompt instead of as the
- native CLI, because then you probably get a double whammy of converting the
- POSIX output back to regular VMS tty output. Logging in with /CLI=POSIX$CLI
- makes a difference, and regular POSIX output in that environment is not slow.
- (2) the help library entry for VMS_POSIX is a huge monolithic entry that
- yields slow processing from the librarian. My suggestion (to a V1.1 beta
- tester, for forwarding to the developers as field test feedback...) was to
- move the POSIX details into a separate library and eliminate one or two
- levels of keys needed to reach the topics of interest; access should be
- noticeably faster. Only the POSIX invocation details need to be in the
- regular help library, and they should be listed under the command name
- "POSIX" instead of the product name "VMS_POSIX".
-
- Some of the `man' text which is in two-column format is pretty awful.
- The columns are so narrow that they require excessive continuation lines
- to cover anything. (See `$ help VMS_POSIX Shell_commands stty Operands'
- for example.)
-
- Pat Rankin, rankin@eql.caltech.edu
-