Subject: Re: Manual page width is fixed and I'd like it not to be
From: Brian Dessent <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 18:03:21 -0800

Christopher Faylor wrote:

> >Thanks for the pointer, and I'll ask on the cygwin-xfree list as well.
> >It's not really a query about xterm, though: using a shortcut that
> >starts bash in a standard Windows command-shell which is 100 columns
> >wide, if I ask for a manual page, I still get it formatted to eighty
> >columns.  I mentioned xterms since that's what I prefer to use, but
> >it's not by any means a problem exclusive to those.
> 
> Ok, you and three or four other people made this point after I blocked
> the subject here because I thought it was xterm specific.
> 
> Instead, it isn't even cygwin-specific.  All of my man pages are
> formatted to 80 columns on linux, too.  If you think about how man
> works, where it caches the formatted output in a separate directory
> it is easy to see why that is the case.

FYI, I have not looked at how it does it, but Debian linux gets this
right.  Manpages are formatted to the screen width (be that rxvt,
cmd.exe, local VC, whatever.)  I have always found manpages more
pleasing without the vast waste of screen realestate that most 'man'
implementations have.

In fact Cygwin's "man man" mentions this:

      MANWIDTH
              If MANWIDTH is set, its value is  used  as  the  width 
manpages
              should  be displayed.  Otherwise the pages may be
displayed over
              the whole width of your screen.

...which is false on both counts: it does not honor the MANWIDTH env.var
and it does not size to the screen's natural width.

Brian

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