RE: How dow we educate our users to configure less?

[Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>]

Randall S. Becker wrote:
> 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