Re: Playground pager lsp(1)

Dirk Gouders
2023-04-06T06:01:36Z

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Hi Alex,

Alejandro Colomar <alx.manpages@gmail.com> writes:

>> If you want to take a look at it: there is a branch "next" which you
>> might prefer as it closer resembles my current work. There is a new
>> toggle "-V" that can be used to completely turn off validation.
>>
>> I tried to assemble a Makefile that might work without a configure
>> script and attach it to the end. A prefix /usr is the default value, if
>> your system prefers /usr/local you can use `make prefix=/usr/local
>
> The default prefix in GNU should be /usr/local
> <https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Directory-Variables.html>
>
>> install`. I hope I prepared some reasonable Makefile...
>
> I'll have a look.

Perhaps, I messed up the Makefile. Some time ago, I test-compiled lsp
on Rasbpian and CentOS and -lutil was missing. That got fixed in
meson.build but not in the Makefile I sent you. I'll attach a new
one -- this time as plain text ;-)

>>> If it's the first, how do you handle exit(1)? Is it a reference, or is it
>>> just code (with the meaning exit(EXIT_FAILURE))?
>>
>> exit(1) gets recognized as a possible reference but validation will fail.
>
> `man 'exit(1)'` works for me. It brings the exit(1posix) page, from
> manpages-posix.

Oh yes, I didn't have the POSIX manual pages installed -- now, exit(1)
gets recognized as a reference. Thank you.

>> No, broken references aren't marked. Usually those unavailable
>> references make sense, e.g. if a manual page references some program
>> that not everyone uses.
>>
>> One example that I couldn't resolve so far is a reference to
>> getconf(1) for example in fpatchconf(3). Up to now I was not able to
>> find out which package contains getconf(1)...
>
> $ apt-file find /getconf.1
> glibc-source: /usr/src/glibc/debian/local/manpages/getconf.1
> libc-bin: /usr/share/man/man1/getconf.1.gz
> manpages-fr: /usr/share/man/fr/man1/getconf.1.gz
>
> It's in libc-bin.
>
> BTW, did you mean fpathconf(3)?

Yes, that was a typo. I'm on Gentoo and there is no libc-bin. But now
I have a direction to search. Thank you, again.

>
>>
>>>>
>>>> • In windowing environments lsp does complete resizes when windows
>>>> get resized. This means it also reloads the manual page to fit the
>>>> new window size.
>>>
>>> Good. This I miss it in less(1) often. Not sure if they had any strong
>>> reason to not support that.
>>
>> Unfortunately, info(1) also doesn't do full resizes (on my system).
>>
>>>>
>>>> • Search for manual pages using apropos(1); in the current most basic
>>>> form it lists all known manual pages ready for text search and
>>>> visiting referenced manual pages.
>>>
>>> What does it bring that `apropos * | less` can't do? If you're going the
>>> of info(1) with full-blown system, it seems reasonable, but I never really
>>> liked all that if it's just a new terminal and a command away from me.
>>
>> You get a pseudo-file from where you can reach any manual page on the
>> system. Originally I thought this to help novice users but since lsp is
>> my system's PAGER I use it more often than expected. I'm missing the
>> ability to give keywords to apropos but that's just a matter of time to
>> get fixed.
>
> I guess that's a matter of preferring navigation in some interactive
> program (to me, info(1) style), vs standalone simple commands where you
> first find what you want, then run it.
>
> I don't find that magic much more comfortable than
>
> $ apropos sysctl
> ... oh, I find many freebsd pages, let's grep them out ...
> $ apropos sysctl | grep -v freebsd
> ... hmm, let's see system ...
> $ apropos system | grep -v freebsd
> ... okay, now this shows a lot of stuff, let's remove man1 ...
> $ apropos system | grep -v -e freebsd -e '(1'
> ... I don't want systemd either ...
> $ apropos system | grep -v -e freebsd -e '(1' -e systemd
> ... let's sort by section and navigate through that list ...
> $ apropos system | grep -v -e freebsd -e '(1' -e systemd | sort -k2 | less
>
> Find some pages that may be interesting, note them down, and open
> them one by one, in different tabs, until I find I wanted to read
> proc(5), and close everything else.

As I wrote: I (also) had novice users in mind when I implented the
Apropos pseudo-file (it can also be used for verification, that's
another use of it). I often watch novice users getting frustrated about
all the typing that is needed to get useful results. I know, first of
all, they need to train their "keyboard abilities" but some help here
and there could perhaps help to keep them on board or minimize
frustration...

> Which brings us to a valid point Eli raised. Some pages are an
> unreadable mess, and I think proc(5) is one of those that needs
> a big split into smaller pages such as proc_pid_attr(5).

Yes, one of the points where I thought pagers with additional
features could help...

Cheers,

Dirk

[-- Attachment #2: Makefile for lsp(1) --]
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version=\"$(shell cat .version)\"
CFLAGS := $(shell pkg-config --cflags ncursesw)
CFLAGS += -DLSP_VERSION=$(version)
LDFLAGS := $(shell pkg-config --libs ncursesw)
LDFLAGS += -lutil

ifeq ($(prefix),)
prefix := /usr/local
endif

lsp: lsp.c
gcc $(CFLAGS) $(LDFLAGS) -o $@ $<

doc/lsp.1: doc/lsp.adoc
a2x --doctype manpage --format manpage -a lsp-version=$(version) $<

.PHONY: uninstall install

install: lsp doc/lsp.1 doc/lsp-help.1
install lsp $(prefix)/bin
install doc/lsp.1 doc/lsp-help.1 $(prefix)/share/man/man1/

uninstall:
rm $(prefix)/bin/lsp
rm $(prefix)/share/man/man1/lsp{,-help}.1