Re: [PATCH v7] help: colorize man pages if man.color=true under less(1)

From: Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>
Date: Jun 21, 2021, 18:41 UTC
Message-ID: <60d0dd619a2c6_10782120814@natae.notmuch>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqfsxbika3.fsf@gitster.g>

Junio C Hamano wrote:

> Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason  <avarab@gmail.com> writes:

Show 9 quoted lines

> > Fair enough, here's a version I think you and others will find
> > acceptable then. It allows users like me who like this to explicitly
> > opt-in via color.man=true.
> 
> Not really.
> 
> Since the implementation of the posted patch, as I understand it,
> does not aim to affect both "git help -m foo" and "man git-foo"
> identically,

It cannot aim to do what is not possible.

Show 6 quoted lines

> I think it would be easier to understand to end-users
> if this were exposed as a new "mode", like "git help --web" and "git
> help --info" are different modes from the "git help --man",
> something like "git help --fancy-man" (or whatever is easy to type
> and explain, and also add it to the variants help.format knows about
> to make it easy to set the default).

But it is not a new mode.

I presume you mean format, since man, info, and web are formats, controlled by help.format.

But no, it's not a format either, because we still want to see the same format (man).

Perhaps you meant a man viewer (controlled with man.viewer), but there's no command line option to launch help with for example emacs woman.

But still, it's not a new viewer; it's an improvement of an already existing viewer.

> One advantage of doing so is that we do not have to worry about "ah,
> user has LESS_BLAH environment variable so we should disable this
> new mode here" etc.

We don't have to worry about that with the current patch.

> As long as the new mode is requested either via
> the command line option or help.format configuration, it can
> completely take it over.

That is already the case.

> That simplifies the necessary explanation given to the users quite a
> lot, no?

No, it would still be:

 1. man.viewer=fancyman must be set in the config
 2. The user must use less
 3. Not have the same LESS_TERMCAP variables set (we call setenv(3) with overwrite=0)
 4. Have color.ui enabled
 5. Not have color.pager disabled
 6. Not have git with stdout directed to a file

Moreover, this explanation is for developers.

Realistically all the user needs to know is that color.man=true turns this on (man.viewer=fancyman is not better in any way).

-- 
Felipe Contreras