Re: Harmful LESS flags

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Apr 24, 2014, 21:47 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqq4n1iv1re.fsf@gitster.dls.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <20140424213529.GB7815@sigill.intra.peff.net>

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

Show 8 quoted lines

> I would think it's the opposite. Long lines look _horrible_ without
> "-S", as they get wrapped at awkward points. Using "-S" means that long
> lines don't bug you, unless you really want to scroll over and see the
> content.
>
> I really think the right solution here is to teach less to make it more
> obvious that there is something worth scrolling over to. Here's a very
> rough patch for less, if you want to see what I'm thinking of.

Yes, I think that was suggested as an issue worth bringing up with less maintainers earlier in the thread already (and that was why I didn't repeat it). If we were in the business of updating less to suit many users' needs (the needs of our users included), we may even want to advocate turning R on by default.

And I do agree that the "chopped marker" would be a very sensible thing to show in the "-S" output; I would have chosen "$" myself for that to match an existing practice in (setq truncate-lines t) in Emacs, though.