RE: How dow we educate our users to configure less?
- From
Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>
- Date
- Jun 28, 2021, 19:44 UTC
- Message-ID
- <60da2692e8029_1d6fc20855@natae.notmuch>
- In-Reply-To
- <029101d76c54$9f713c50$de53b4f0$@nexbridge.com>
Randall S. Becker wrote:
Show 46 quoted lines
> On June 28, 2021 3:02 PM, Felipe Contreras wrote: > >Randall S. Becker wrote: > >> On June 28, 2021 2:12 PM, Felipe Contreras wrote: > >> >Felipe Contreras wrote: > >> >> It has been suggested that we "educate our users" to configure less > >> >> in the right way, instead of colorizing man pages ourselves [1]. > >> >> > >> >> The question is *how*? Nobody has answered that. > >> >> > >> >> This is a continuation of the thread below. > >> > > >> >> I am still waiting for an explanation. > >> >> > >> >> How does the user properly colorize man pages for both man and git > >> >> in a way that works in all distributions? > >> > > >> >No response. > >> > >> I think you're looking for something does not exist because it is > >> platform and environment dependent. > > > >Yes, but there's always some common denominator. > > > >> There are two ways to configure git to work with 'less' on NonStop and > >> neither is identical to Ubuntu or Windows. > > > >But I'm not talking about configuring git to work with less. > > > >Once you have less configured, how do you add colors? For example how do you turn bold into red bold? > > > >> Don't even get me started on what less does in a TSO/ISPF environment > >> where everything is some single colour on black unless your emulator > >> supports 3279 emulation. > > > >Is it even possible to add color there? I'm talking about platforms where color is possible in the first place. > > > >> >It's safe to say at this point that nobody knows what that configuration would look like. > >> > >> Nobody, perhaps, knows how to do this on every platform in the known > >> universe 😊. There is no "one way" to do this consistently everywhere. > > > >In the platforms where color is supported, and you have less, what does this do? > > > > LESS_TERMCAP_md=$'\e[1;31m' LESS_TERMCAP_me=$'\e[m' git help git > > This only works in bash/shell. So if you are not initiating from a shell, you cannot use this technique.
I know. The technique is not the point. You can use whatever technique you want to get LESS_TERMCAP_md and LESS_TERMCAP_me set on the environment before launching `git help git` in whatever way you want.
Now, clearly that technique would vary platform by platform, which is precisely why I'm proposing to do it inside `git help` itself [1].
Clearly this would work on every platform that has less and color and it's technique-independent:
setenv("LESS_TERMCAP_md", GIT_COLOR_BOLD_RED, 0);
setenv("LESS_TERMCAP_me", GIT_COLOR_RESET, 0);Would it not?
[1] https://lore.kernel.org/git/20210626025040.104428-1-felipe.contreras@gmail.com/
-- Felipe Contreras