Re: [Groff] Compression support for files?

[Ingo Schwarze]

Hi Steffen,

Keith Marshall wrote on Wed, Jul 16, 2014 at 09:13:42PM +0100:

> Not directly related to subject, but (in an attached diff) ...

Also, to make life easier for yourself, never put two or more
logically unrelated changes into the same diff, in particular
not into large ones (like this one).  The only exception are maybe
small diffs collecting several minor changes as long as all of
them are certainly trivial and uncontroversial.

Mixing changes makes a diff harder to review for others,
harder to get feedback for you, and if you do get feedback,
it is likely do be unrelated and the discussion is likely
to get derailed, as you see here...

I didn't come round to review your diff yet, but here are two
basic observations:

 1) Disk space is rarely expensive nowadays,
    so i rather strongly dislike installing *anything*
    compressed.  Often it hinders searching with grep(1).
    Sometimes it hinders viewing files with cat(1).
    Often it slows down operation - decompression has to be
    done again and again, uselessly.

 2) Even if such an option were disabled by default,
    i would rather not have the option than have it.
    No matter how you do it, it is likely to add some
    complication and another layer of indirection to the code.
    So i'd like to see a rationale which real-world needs
    this is going to help and why these needs cannot be
    satisfied in other, more trivial and UNIXy ways,
    like pipes involving the compression tools.
    Saving disk space is not a good reason, IMHO.

Yours,
  Ingo