Re: why aren't man pages compressed?

[Alvar Bray <alvar@meiko.co.uk>]

Hi All,

The compression of man pages is a general Debian issue not a man
package isssue. 

The current setup for man (man_db) will read compress man pages as
well as uncompressed ones. If a package contains compressed nroff man
pages they will be found and displayed as normal.

Currently all catman pages produced will be compressed.

When I gzip (-9) a /usr/man dir I observe:

   bash# ls
   X11R6        dict         include      local        sbin         tmp
   adm          doc          info         man          spool
   bin          games        lib          man.gzipped  src
   bash# du -sk man
   5696    man
   bash# du -sk man.gzipped
   2985    man.gzipped

Or more accurately:

   bash# ls -l man/*/* | awk 'BEGIN {sum=0};{sum+=$5}; END {print sum}'
   5006552
   bash# ls -l man.gzipped/*/* | awk 'BEGIN {sum=0};{sum+=$5}; END {print sum}'
   2224172

So we dont save much space - mainly I suspect, because man pages are
generally short.

alvar

-- 
Alvar Bray

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