[tex-live] Pause option for TLMGR --help

Philip TAYLOR (Ret'd) P.Taylor at Rhul.Ac.Uk
Sat Sep 6 13:17:32 CEST 2008



Heiko Oberdiek wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 05, 2008 at 02:48:45PM +0100, Philip TAYLOR wrote:
> 
>> Ah, different philosophy, Manuel : in the Windows
>> world, each program is (expected to be) self-contained,
>> so each would (in an ideal world) provide paging
>> by itself rather than being dependent on being
>> executed as part of a chain ...
>> ** Phil.
> 
> Then you shouldn't use TeX, it isn't self-contained, because
> it does not include neither an editor nor an viewer. ;-)

To be serious just for a second, there is a fundamental
difference : it matters not one jot whether the editor
and viewer run synchronously or asynchronously with
TeX (indeed, the editor should logically run asynchronously),
whilst a pager /must/ run synchronously.  As the average
Windows user is typically unaware of program chaining
via pipes, he or she will expect synchronous functionality
to be integrated in the base product, whilst Unix/Linux
(hereinafter Lunix) users almost invariably are familiar
with program chaining and will (almost) expect to have
to pipe through "more" if paged output is required.

** Phil.


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