Re: [PATCH v4] help: colorize man pages

> On 20/05/2021 14:58, Felipe Contreras wrote:
> > Phillip Wood wrote:
> >> On 20/05/2021 05:07, Felipe Contreras wrote:
> >>> We already colorize tools traditionally not colorized by default, like
> >>> diff and grep. Let's do the same for man.
> >>
> >> I think there is a distinction between 'diff' and 'grep' where we are
> >> generating the content and help where we are running man
> > 
> > It makes a difference for git developers, not for the user.
> > 
> > The user doesn't care how the output of `git grep` was generated, all
> > she sees is that it's different from `grep`. It's in fact more
> > surprising than a difference in `git help` because it's even the same
> > comand.
> > 
> > Maybe if the command was `git man` they would be equally surprising, but
> > it's not, in fact, `git help` can be used to 1) output directly to the
> > terminal 2) view in a browser, 3) view in info program, 4) view man page
> > in woman, 5) view the man page in koqueror 6) view the man page in man.
> > 
> > Only in one case among many would the user expect to see man, therefore
> > a colorized `git grep` is more surprising.
> 
> I'm not sure I follow that argument

> >>> If the user has already set the LESS variable in his/her environment,
> >>> that is respected, and nothing changes.
> >>
> >> However if they have specified the colors they would like by using the
> >> LESS_TERMCAP_xx environment variables that the previous versions of this
> >> patch used their choice is overridden by this new patch.
> > 
> > That is true. We could add a check for that:
> > 
> >    if (getenv("LESS_TERMCAP_md"))
> >            return;
> > 
> > However, it may not be necessary since many of the tips online set these
> > variables inside a function.
> 
> The only person who has tested this patch has reported a problem with 
> it, it seems unlikely that no other users will have similar issues.