Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1998 13:49:42 -0500 From: Jonathan Lemon <jlemon@americantv.com> To: David Wolfskill <dhw@whistle.com> Cc: c9707010@alinga.newcastle.edu.au, chrisc@vmunix.com, freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Speed of FreeBSD Message-ID: <19980821134942.47219@right.PCS> In-Reply-To: <199808211742.KAA05148@pau-amma.whistle.com>; from David Wolfskill on Aug 08, 1998 at 10:42:35AM -0700 References: <Pine.BSF.3.96.980821004800.20778A-100000@vnode> <199808211742.KAA05148@pau-amma.whistle.com>
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On Aug 08, 1998 at 10:42:35AM -0700, David Wolfskill wrote: > >Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1998 00:52:54 -0400 (EDT) > >From: Chris Coleman <chrisc@vmunix.com> > > >On Fri, 21 Aug 1998, Stewart Heckenberg wrote: > > >> Anyone notice that when sometimes looking for a man page, it takes a > >> little while to load? > > >The times when it takes "a little while" to load a man page is because > >they are in a compressed format. When it says "formatting man page..." it > >is uncompressing them. If you access that man page again, you won't see > >that message, and it will load much faster. The man pages are then > >recompressed if they are not accessed after a certain amount of time. Actually, the manual pages are stored in (usually) /usr/share/man/manX, where X is the section number for the manual. These are in 'roff[1] format, and are compressed. When you request a man page, it needs to translate the 'roff format into ascii. This involves converting the format into something that looks `right' for your display. The results are then stored in /usr/share/man/catX, as ``catpages'', meaning that you can just `cat' them to your terminal, with no processing involved. The catpages are also compressed. When you access the man page a second time, it compares the timestamps of the `man page' to the `cat page', and if the cat page is newer, just sends this to your terminal. As you've noticed, this is faster than re-translating 'roff sources again. Both of them are kept in compressed format, and the un-compression time is not usually noticeable (unless you have really slow hardware). -- Jonathan [1] where 'roff refers to one of troff,nroff,groff, etc. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
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