Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 15:20:53 +0200 (MET DST)
From: Hans-Bernhard Broeker <broeker AT physik DOT rwth-aachen DOT de>
To: "Salvador Eduardo Tropea (SET)" <salvador AT inti DOT gov DOT ar>
cc: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>, djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com,
        Charles Sandmann <sandmann AT clio DOT rice DOT edu>
Subject: Re: Ispell and pipes
In-Reply-To: <m0yyyFb-000S4bC@inti.gov.ar>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.93.980722150254.12561H-100000@acp3bf>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
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On Wed, 22 Jul 1998, Salvador Eduardo Tropea (SET) wrote:

> Yes I mean that. Is very difficult to read the man pages with all the 
> deletes floating around.

I wouldn't say 'less page.1' is 'difficult'. Heck, even the venerable
old 'list.com' by Vernon Buerg manages to display those texts correctly.
Or even a simple 'more <page.1'!.

No offence meant, but 'very difficult' would be something entirely
different, IMHO.

> Yes I know, but a not a new user. You said in this list (twice one to 
> Gili and one to me) that info files are shipped in DOS format because 
> some DOS editors fails to break the lines in '\n'. Here is worst, 
> I don't know about even one DOS editor that parses the delete 
> characters ;-).

Well, who said you're meant to edit info files or postprocessed .man
pages, at all? It's generally wrong to do so, in both cases. The only
reason that makes it necessary to explicitly handle this error for .info
files is that the format is not just text, but also contains things like
absolute file positions (in the index table). Those have to be fixed after
a file has been tampered with. With man pages, that can't really
happen, so there's nothing to fix. 

And if you really want to edit those files, there's always the little tool
that knows how to remove backspace-character sequences from a text file. I
just don't remember the name off the top of my head, but it came with cawf
(a poor-man's groff for man pages). 

And of course, as the author of one (somewhat popular) DOS editor, it's
finally *your* task to make your editor handle backspace-enhanced ASCII
files properly, if you want it done :-) 

Hans-Bernhard Broeker (broeker AT physik DOT rwth-aachen DOT de)
Even if all the snow were burnt, ashes would remain.