Baslinux mailing list

[sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>]

 Lee Forrest wrote (concerning replacements for 'man').

> > > I have a sed script somewhere that would do the same job on BL3.
> >
> > BL3 does not have man (the package was about 10MB).  Several of us came up
> > with a script involving man2html and lynx to read man pages, but it does
> > poorly on upper ASCII characters.  Can you write a better man replacement?
>
> I like the basic BL approach. Might be able to come up with an
> apropos-like (man -k) script that would search the descriptions
> of all the manpages for the occurrence of a string specified on
> the commandline. This would be very useful.

Why descriptions rather than file names?

> It would be faster and simpler to create a sort-of database with those
> in it, and use it. Which is what apropos/whatis do. Wouldn't be a huge
> file.

locatedb does this
You need to update it when you add man pages.

> And that sed script does work for some types (troff/nroff/groff) of
> manpages to convert them to plain text. Could make another for the
> other common type.
>
> So man could have a -h option that catted a file that read
> something like this:
>
> man program_name
>
> man -k string #open descriptions that have the string in them
>              # in less

zless if gzipped

> man -c file  # convert man page to plain text and gzip it and put
>             # it in /usr/man and delete the manpage

I would run this on all my manpages to start with.

> man -u       # update description database (could run at boot from
>             # /etc/rc

> But hang loose. I've got the mutt from your site working on BL
> (thanks again), but haven't tested msmtp or fetchmail or procmail
> and straightened out their configuration files, if necessary.

With a few good scripts mutt should not be needed for basic file upload 
and download including base64 encoding/decodgin.

> Many thanks to David Moberg for creating the uclibc, statically-linked
> executables of msmtp and fetchmail, and the new pppd-2.4.1 dynamically
> linked libc5, for me. (And anyone who asks me for them. I don't have
> a website right now, but will netcat them over.)

You could ask David to post them, and/or I could do so.

> Got procmail/formail from SW4.0.

I know how to write .procmailrc and .forward to filter spam as it arrives 
in my shell account.  Is there some way to filter it before downloading 
with POP?

> Making the shift from debian to BL is my top computer priority at
> present.
>
> debian 5923 directories, 434851 files 3.2G
>
> BL 116 directories, 974 files 23M

What programs does this include?  Abiword is a biggie (12MB).  The few 
times I tried to use it to edit WORD files it botched the format.  Could 
not even import tables.  They now send pdf instead.  I can print that with 
netpbm after converting pdftopbm.

> > > I've installed elvis from SW4.0 (I really need a full-featured editor)
> > > and altered the man script like so:
> > >
> > > gunzip /usr/man/$1.gz &&
> > > /usr/bin/elvis /usr/man/$1 &&
> > > gzip /usr/man/$1
> >
> > Would this also work with the busybox vi (in the version I compiled,
> > 1.1.0)?

I tested and it displays the man pages with tags, same as less does.
....

> > > But how much longer will floppies even be manufactured?
> >
> > I keep everything on hard disk.  My 1.44MB floppies are always failing.
> > THe 720s last longer, 360K's almost forever.  We are now using USB memory
> > sticks for most file transfers, or zip drive (parport) if no USB>
>
> Are those not using volatile RAM? If so, how can you trust them?

File transfers, not long-term storage.  So far neither medium has failed.

> > > Get me the templates for the various mails_with_attachments you
> > > want to send, and I'll write that script.
> >
> > Do I need different templates depending on the file format (jpg zip
> > doc..)?
>
> Not sure. Maybe if those are specified in the boundary markers. Hmmm...
> I guess not. No reason the script to couldn't read the filetype and
> assign it to a local environment variable.  I don't _think_...

So do you need my help for this project?  (I have to do some paid work 
now).

> Lee

Sindi