[Groff] Re: grohtml 1.19.2/Win32

[MARSHALL Keith]

Hi Jeff,

> ... I wonder, however, if zero (rather than, say, BUFSIZ) is the right 
value
> for the buffer size.  Using a value of zero doesn't seem to help the 
hanging
> problem that arises from Win32's lack of SIGPIPE.  ...

The recommendation to use zero, rather than BUFSIZ, or anything else, came
from Earnie Boyd <address@hidden>, who is the lead developer
on the MinGW project.  AIUI, passing zero causes the _pipe() 
implementation
to adopt a default value for the buffer size, (which I believe is the 
value
of BUFSIZ in Microsoft's MSVC stdio.h), established when msvcrt.dll itself
was built.  There is, I think, a presumption that Microsoft's default 
value
provides the most effective operation of the pipe.  However, if we 
explicitly
specify BUFSIZ, then there is no guarantee that we use the value which is
considered (by Microsoft) to be optimal; it will depend on what is defined 
in
stdio.h, (or wherever), and could differ from the Microsoft default.

Best regards,
Keith.