How does man know?

[Frank I. Reiter]

In article <592 at crdos1.crd.ge.COM> davidsen at crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen) writes:
>  And guess what? It *is* convenient to have it work that way.

In article <11182 at smoke.BRL.MIL> gwyn at brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn) writes:
>
>No, it isn't.  One can easily add pagination in those cases where it
>is desired, but it's much more difficult to defeat wired-in pagination
>in those cases where it isn't desired.
>
>Consider "man whatever > /dev/tty_printer".  Why should that try to
>paginate?

man is optimized for the usual case.  The authors obviously expected that
the usual case would be interactive use on a terminal but allowed for non-
paginated (non-interactive) use if output was not going to a terminal.

It is TRIVIAL "to defeat wired-in pagination [etc.]"  I don't consider myself
any sort of wizard but it took me only a moment to think of:

man whatever | cat >/dev/tty_printer

for the problem you pose.
-- 
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