[Crash-utility] less(1) TERM requirements; man page update

[Markus Armbruster]

Dave Anderson <anderson at redhat.com> writes:

> Markus Armbruster wrote:
>> Dave Anderson <anderson at redhat.com> writes:
>>
>>>D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
>>>
>>>>| From: Dave Anderson <anderson at redhat.com>
>>>>| Fine, but at a minimum I propose the addition of a "--more" command
>>>>| line argument to force its use instead of "less".  With that in place,
>>>>| I've verified that crash scrolling works fine using the "vanilla"
>>>>| TERM type, and I presume that using "more" for scrolling would suffice
>>>>| within the emacs/jove/vanilla environment as well?
>>>>Would it not be better to use $PAGER to make this choice?
>>>>- it is already a convention
>>>>- it doesn't add to the tangle of options
>>>>- it allows even more control (eg. PAGER=cat)
>>>>
>>>
>>>I guess because $PAGER is typically not set, and PAGER=cat is
>>>pretty much the same as "set scroll off".
>> I don't mind when a tool has its own idiosyncratic default for unset
>> $PAGER, but I do mind when it ignores $PAGER in favour of its own
>> idiosyncratic pager selection mechanism.
>>
>
> Ok -- but I'm still curious as to what other pager would be
> preferable to less, more, or none?
>
> Dave

Personally, I'm happy with less and none, but I very much prefer to
control it through $PAGER, because that's the common way to do it.

A more philosophical argument is that it's simply not ours to decide
what pagers users are allowed use.  And we don't have to.  $PAGER is
no less usable than the alternatives, yet provides all the choice
users could want.