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Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!msuinfo!agate!overload.lbl.gov!dog.ee.lbl.gov!ihnp4.ucsd.edu!swrinde!pipex!uknet!cf-cm!myrddin.isl.cf.ac.uk!paul From: paul@myrddin.isl.cf.ac.uk (Paul) Subject: Re: man works sssslow Message-ID: <1994Jun2.162224.9083@cm.cf.ac.uk> Sender: paul@myrddin.isl.cf.ac.uk (Paul) Organization: ELSYM, University of Wales, College of Cardiff, UK. References: <2sjka9$qmd@panix2.panix.com> Date: Thu, 2 Jun 1994 16:22:22 +0000 Lines: 31 In article <2sjka9$qmd@panix2.panix.com>, Boris Pitel <scibp6p@panix.com> wrote: > Hi, everybody! > I have may be simple question. I just installed FreeBSD 1.0. Everything > seems to work OK as far as you can determine in 1/2 hour. But... > When I did "man ls" the system as usually told it's "reformating ....." > and was doing the reformating for 3-4 minutes. After I did "man ls" again > the man pages appeared immediately. It seems that every new topic I am trying > to man takes considerable amount of time to "reformat" . > My characteristics are 486DX2-66, and I gave 270Mb to BSD. > PS. > Before I installed NetBSD and I didn't have any problems with man. > Any help will be appreciated. > Boris Pitel. > FreeBSD has a different man system to NetBSD. Basically, it installs the man pages in source format in ../man/man[1-8] and the first time you man a page it gets formatted into a cattable form. The formatted pages are then cached in ../man/cat[1-8] so that next time you need to view the page it doesn't have to be reformatted. There are also options for using compressed man pages too. Having the source to the man pages can be usefull, for producing hard copy output that takes full advantage of the typesetting commands for instance. I think there's a command catman that will format all the man pages in one go so there's not a delay when you read a new manpage. -- Paul Richards, FreeBSD core team member. Intelligent Systems Laboratory, ELSYM ,University of Wales, College Cardiff Internet: paul@isl.cf.ac.uk, JANET(UK): RICHARDSDP@UK.AC.CARDIFF