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Re: Debian 1.1 man & more



In article <[🔎] Pine.LNX.3.93.960602090541.210A-100000@SAL9000> you write:
>
>On Sat, 1 Jun 1996, Guy Maor wrote:
>
>> On Sat, 1 Jun 1996, Richard Lovison wrote:
>> 
>> > While using man to read a manpage I am not able to scroll backwards a page
>> > by using "b" or "^B". 
>> 
>> more can't go backwards on unseekable files, like pipes for example.
>> (man pipes the data out to the viewer so it'll start up faster.)
> 
>Hmmm.  If my memory serves me right I was able to do this on my old
>Slackware setup and I am currently able to do this on my provider's system
>which is running System V Release 4.0.  BTW, this is not a complaint,
>just a statement indicating my confusion and ignorance. :) 

Those systems maybe format the manpage to a temporary file, then
use more to view that file.  Debian's man put the formatted output
through a pipe directly to the pager, for speed.

>> less doesn't have this deficiency.  Use it with man by setting the 
>> PAGER environment variable to `less'.

Note that you can also do: 

  $ export MANOPT='-Pless'

so that you only get less when viewing manpages, not as your default
pager (if for some reason you don't like less :)

Austin


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