> > On Tue, 1 Jul 1997, Peter S Galbraith wrote: > > > > > This is not readable by an editor. Is there something special about the > > > > .gz?? > > > > <<snip>> > > (Funny how an non-Debian specific question still generates so many > > responses on this list!) > > Not really. What we have here is a real problem for the newbies.
Sure > > To access the documentation you really need to be able to access > the documentation. Then you can determine what is (and isn't) a Debian > specific issue. Having a system which can hold the newbies' hand till > they can walk for themselves has probably never been a design goal for > Debian, but I think that the user base is growing at such a rate that > it could be time... ^^^^^ Should ... actually if you want to attract msdog ppl, a "must"! > > Perhaps there should be a quick intro to gzip, zless and zcat in the > opening scripts (just after the first dselect run?). Perhaps just a /usr/doc/intro/* section that may actually contain this and other useful newbie tips Ok, so let's take a previous response: use 'most' ... $ most some_text_file.gz ... fine $ most some_archive.tar.gz ... _not_ yet configured to display the 'listing' ... instead it gives the 'contents' ... not very useful Ok ... having used slip_slop_slackware I can't help comparing the way 'less' is configured there ... not having even known of 'most' and noticing how on the deb-1.2 system I manage that 'less' does not have the same configured functionality as the 'less' on slackware, I simply copied the configs over ... in /etc/profile 3 things: (1) LESS="-M -I" ... and the switches mean .... -i Causes searches to ignore case; that is, uppercase and lowercase are considered identical. This option is ignored if any uppercase letters appear in the search pattern; in other words, if a pattern contains upper- case letters, then that search does not ignore case. -I Like -i, but searches ignore case even if the pattern contains uppercase letters. -M Causes less to prompt even more verbosely than more. (2) .... as well as the environment variable for the script that 'less' uses to "pipe" : export LESSOPEN="|lesspipe.sh %s" (3) export PAGER=less -------------------- .... Now, that script 'lesspipe.sh' I could not find on the debian system at work, so I ripped it from the slackware one at home, which lives in /usr/bin/lesspipe.sh ..... And the script is : ----------------- cut here --------------------------------------- #!/bin/sh # This is a preprocessor for 'less'. It is used when this environment # variable is set: LESSOPEN="|lesspipe.sh %s" lesspipe() { case "$1" in *.tar) tar tvvf $1 2>/dev/null ;; # View contents of .tar and .tgz files *.tgz) tar tzvvf $1 2>/dev/null ;; *.tar.gz) tar tzvvf $1 2>/dev/null ;; *.tar.Z) tar tzvvf $1 2>/dev/null ;; *.tar.z) tar tzvvf $1 2>/dev/null ;; *.Z) gzip -dc $1 2>/dev/null ;; # View compressed files correctly *.z) gzip -dc $1 2>/dev/null ;; *.gz) gzip -dc $1 2>/dev/null ;; *.zip) unzip -l $1 2>/dev/null ;; *.1|*.2|*.3|*.4|*.5|*.6|*.7|*.8|*.9|*.n|*.man) FILE=`file -L $1` ; # groff src FILE=`echo $FILE | cut -d ' ' -f 2` if [ "$FILE" = "troff" ]; then groff -s -p -t -e -Tascii -mandoc $1 fi ;; # *) FILE=`file -L $1` ; # Check to see if binary, if so -- view with 'strings' # FILE1=`echo $FILE | cut -d ' ' -f 2` # FILE2=`echo $FILE | cut -d ' ' -f 3` # if [ "$FILE1" = "Linux/i386" -o "$FILE2" = "Linux/i386" \ # -o "$FILE1" = "ELF" -o "$FILE2" = "ELF" ]; then # strings $1 # fi ;; esac } lesspipe $1 # eof ----------------- cut here --------------------------------------- .... 'less', for me, still does 'more' than 'most' ;) > > John Foster > Rob - ps: 1st posting here ... I must say documentation, packaging and administration in debian appear to be more 'complete' than in slackware ... unfortunately at this stage I have come over to work with a rather misconfigured debian system ... hoping to get good support here ... -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .