Re: [PATCH] Quick description of possible gitattributes system

[Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com>]

On Fri, 2 Mar 2007, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On Fri, 2 Mar 2007, Jakub Narebski wrote:
>> Andy Parkins wrote:
>> 
>>> + - prettyfilter
>>> +   Run by git-cat-file or git-show when content is being pretty-printed
>>> +   for display to the user.  If no prettyfilter is set, then it should
>>> +   default to outfilter.
>> 
>> I'd rather have plumbing operate without filters (if it is possible),
>> so git-cat-file would not run prettyfilter, and git-show would run it.
[...]
> So I really think that the issue here is that the *pager* should do the 
> right thing. Which gets us to:
> 
>> Or at least detect if output is tty, so one can do something like
>> "git cat-file -p v1.0.0:gitweb/git-logo.png > git-logo.png" and get
>> expected result, while "git show v1.0.0:gitweb/git-logo.png" would
>> show the image.
> 
> Yes. How about just having the built-in git pager do the right thing?
> 
> Right now we actually wait for data to start arriving (commit 35ce862) due 
> to working around a bug in less. But what if we could make the pager 
> actually do the right thing here automatically? With "less" just being the 
> default action for *text*?

Wouldn't it be better and simplier instead of creating built-in magic
(as in DWIM) pager, to have in place of "prettyfilter", "pretty",
"show" handler "pager" handler, which would define _default_ pager for
given attributes.

It would mean that the filter/sink would be run only when pager is run,
i.e. for "git show" and "git -p cat-file"/"git --paginate cat-file".
I guess that would mean that handler action would be run only for tty.
And you could always override it by setting PAGER environmental variable.

So it would be:

+ - pager
+   Change default pager for this content. If it is not set, it defaults
+   to `less'. You can always override default pager by setting PAGER
+   environmental variable.

-- 
Jakub Narebski
ShadeHawk on #git
Poland