Re: [PATCH] Remove useless warning from man(1)

[Thor Lancelot Simon <tls%panix.com@localhost>]

On Sat, Nov 07, 2026 at 10:45:57AM +0100, Olivier Duclos wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I propose to remove the message "man: Formatting manual page..." that we get
> each time we call man.

This warning is emitted only when preformatted manual pages are not
installed.  It lets users who are, in fact, on slow systems know why they
are waiting -- because even on such systems, if the cat pages are installed,
rendering is instantaneous.

I'm pretty sure this dates back at least to 4.3BSD and possibly past that.