RE: Man pages have colors? A deep dive into groff

From: Randall S. Becker <rsbecker@nexbridge.com>
Date: May 17, 2021, 22:54 UTC
Message-ID: <00b701d74b6f$aa295ed0$fe7c1c70$@nexbridge.com>
In-Reply-To: <60a2f1c4cab0d_13c3702083a@natae.notmuch>

On May 17, 2021 6:44 PM, Felipe Contreras wrote:

Show 15 quoted lines

>Junio C Hamano wrote:
>> Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>> > This looks much better.
>> >
>> > I wonder a good follow-up (hint, hint! :) would be to have
>> > exec_man_man() and exec_man_cmd() in builtin/help.c set this
>> > depending on color.ui (so we'd do it by default with "auto").
>> >
>> > Then e.g. "git help git" would look prettier than "man git".
>>
>> As long as color.man.ui can be used to override the blanket color.ui,
>> I think it is a good idea.
>
>Why not use color.pager?

I think there is a lesson to be learned from git checkout; specifically not to overload semantics. Manual representation is a presentation world unto itself that has should not be blended with programs like less. More than that, being someone who loves automated documentation generation, manual representation has a broader semantic that should not be dismissed. There are probably a whole class of colours that ultimately might be requested - might be me - so I'd rather not blend these into color.pager.

Just my tuppence.

-Randall