[1715] in Release_7.7_team
Re: notes, 3/16
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Robert A Basch)
Wed Mar 17 12:38:10 1999
To: Mike Barker <mbarker@MIT.EDU>
Cc: release-team@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 16 Mar 1999 22:32:08 EST."
<4.1.19990316220736.00b71530@po8.mit.edu>
Date: Wed, 17 Mar 1999 12:37:58 EST
From: Robert A Basch <rbasch@MIT.EDU>
> 3. Fortran man pages. On the SGI, man function will usually show
> fortran man pages before showing C pages. Bob will check whether we
> can change the order easily.
Here's the explanation for the annoying way IRIX man displays Fortran
before C pages...
The main IRIX man root directory is /usr/share/catman; pages for
sections 2 and 3 are found under the programmers' pages subdirectory,
p_man.
For manual section 3, Fortran pages are in the subdirectories cat3/f90
and cat3/ftn, and the C pages are in cat3c. So, man finds the Fortran
pages first, because it looks in cat3 and its subdirectories before
cat3c.
For manual section 2, Fortran pages are under cat2/ftn, all others
are under cat2/standard. Here, the deal seems to be that man will
process these subdirectories in directory entry order (i.e. not
alphabetically), and ftn is the first entry on a couple machines I
checked. (Of course, we'd lose here anyway if it did process these
alphabetically).
There does not seem to be a real good way to change this ordering.
One possibility is to put the C pages into an alternate directory,
and put that directory first in MANPATH. For example, I created
/usr/local/catman/p_man, and then made symlinks under there for
cat2/standard and cat3c back to the /usr/share/catman/p_man
directories, and put /usr/local/catman first in MANPATH. This
makes man display the non-Fortran pages first, though they are
also displayed again when they're found in /usr/share/catman
(if you don't quit by then).
The other way to deal with this would be to modify the install
somehow, to leave directories in the preferred order. Since this
could pose problems when new packages are installed, this doesn't
seem to be a good idea to me.
Bob
