On 01May2016 16:44, Chris Angelico <ros...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sun, May 1, 2016 at 3:24 PM, <c...@zip.com.au> wrote:
Yes, PAGER=cat would make "man" also not page, and likely almost everything.
And yet I am unwilling to do so. Why?
On reflection, my personal problems with this approach are twofold:
- I want $PAGER to specify my preferred pager when I do want a pager, so
setting it to "cat" does not inform apps about my wishes
So you expect the environment variable to say which of multiple pagers
you might want, but only when you already want a pager. Okay. How is
an app supposed to know whether or not to use a pager? How do you
expect them to mindread?
I think for several of us, we do not expect the app to mindread. Don't page for
short output!
As the rest of my article remarks, I at least think "man" should page on the
premise than manual pages will be long enough to benefit, as they should be.
Aside: especially if one uses "less" and includes the -d and -F options in the
$LESS envvar, which suppresses the warning about "dumb" terminals and autoquits
if the file fits on the screen - these two provide most of the painfree
behaviour for short outputs and embedded ttys at least.
We could fork a separate discussion on making pagers more seamless, and
terminal emulators with nice modes to reduce the need for pagers.
Cheers,
Cameron Simpson <c...@zip.com.au>
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