Jeff King wrote: > On Fri, May 21, 2021 at 02:06:48PM +0900, Junio C Hamano wrote: > > > Phillip Wood <phillip.wood123@xxxxxxxxx> writes: > > > > > On 20/05/2021 05:07, Felipe Contreras wrote: > > >> We already colorize tools traditionally not colorized by default, like > > >> diff and grep. Let's do the same for man. > > > > > > I think there is a distinction between 'diff' and 'grep' where we are > > > generating the content and help where we are running man - I would > > > expect a man page to look the same whether it is displayed by 'man git > > > foo' or 'git help foo' > > > > ... as long as the user chooses "man" backend, that is. And I tend > > to agree, but that is our expectation. > > > > If we added this new mode of driving the same "man" but with > > different environment variables exported to tweak how "less" > > behaves, and taught it to builtin/help.c::exec_viewer() and > > builtin/help.c::man_viewer_list, that might become more palatable in > > the sense that we can view it as feeding the same manual page to > > this another "man" that behaves differently from the plain "man", > > just like we can feed it to "woman" or "konqueror" to get a different > > view. So those (like you and I) who expect a man page to look the > > same in "man git foo" and "git help -m foo" can keep using our current > > configuration, while those who want yet another variant of "man" output > > in addition to the current "man", "woman", and "konqueror" can choose > > it and get "colorized" output. > > I still don't understand what we gain by making this a Git feature, What do we gain by making `git diff` output color? > Why would we do that versus saying: if you want to change the colors in > the tool that Git calls, then configure the tool? Once again... How? > If you like to see colors in manpages, why not configure "man" (either > by setting these environment variables all the time, or by triggering > them in MANPAGER)? Let me try that... MANPAGER="less -Dd+r -Du+b -Ds+m" git help git It doesn't work. > If those configurations are awkward to trigger via man (e.g., putting > escapes into termcap variables), isn't that something that could be > improved in man? And then it would benefit everyone who uses man, not > just Git. Sure. In the meantime let's make `git help` output with color just like `git diff`. Cheers. (and good luck convincing a GNU project of anything) -- Felipe Contreras
