Re: [Groff] [groff/patch] transparent gzip

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Mark,

> Find a generic C library (free source, maintained by a third party)
> which sits on top of libc which gives transparent access to various
> file types and can be programmed by the groff level (to allow/prohibit
> various types of compressions, data source types etc...).

There's zlibc which is a library which intercepts open(2), etc., to
provide transparent .gz-decompression.  Linux and Solaris AIUI.

    http://zlibc.linux.lu/

> 4. Phenomenal possibilities: groff would be able to read off FTP,
> HTTP, a record of a database, various compression/encryption types
> etc...

There are already things like ftpfs, and tarfs.  It could be that a
filesystem is a better place to put this kind of thing.  Plan 9 has some
very nice situations where its many file systems make things a lot
simpler.  Doesn't GNU Hurd also stride towards user-space `file system
servers'?

This is probably getting further OT now...


Ralph.