Hi Branden, On 5/17/21 2:50 PM, G. Branden Robinson wrote: > [looping in linux-man@ because issues of user education and topics that > fall between project/man page stools come up below] > > At 2021-05-16T20:29:30-0500, Dave Kemper wrote: >> This stuff about less(1) is only tangential to groff, but it did come >> up in the context of viewing man pages, so I'm keeping the groff list >> in the cc. > > Good idea. I've further changed the Subject: to reflect the flow of the > discussion. > >> On 5/12/21, G. Branden Robinson <g.branden.robinson@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: >>> One thing I would mention is that less(1) supports regex searches >>> within its buffer. On my system, the searches are even >>> case-insensitive by default if the search pattern is all lowercase, >>> and not otherwise. >> >> less's default is for searches to be case-sensitive. Its -i option >> (which can be given on the command line or while less is running) is >> what activates the behavior described above. A user or a distro might >> make -i the default in their environment (I do) through the $LESS >> environment variable or an alias, but that isn't less's out-of-the-box >> behavior. > > On my Debian buster-based system, less(1) behaves that way, but $LESS is > not defined in my environment and I don't have a shell alias or function > set up. Checking the source package, I don't see patches to turn -i on > by default. Baffling! > >>> In fact, to leap among sections you can do >>> >>> /^[a-z] >>> >>> regardless of the lettercase convention, and after doing the above >>> once you can type simply >>> >>> / >>> >>> to repeat the search or >>> >>> ? >>> >>> to repeat it in the backwards direction. >> >> Or to save yourself a keypress (since those methods require a "Return" >> after the "/" or "?") you can use "n" and "N" respectively. Longtime >> vi users will do this without even thinking about it. > > Yup, you caught me. :D > > I don't think it's ever too soon to teach a user who has seen man pages > how to get more out of them, and that includes the pager interface. > It's frustrating because man(1), less(1), and man(7), formally > considered, can all disclaim responsibility for communicating this > knowledge. less(1) can page all sorts of text files, not just man > pages, and its own man page is huge and talks about all kinds of stuff. > man(1) is also big, and that program definitely is not the pager. > man(7) documents the macro package[1], which is a man page _writer's_ > interface, not primarily one for the reader. > > I find myself wishing that intro(1) from the Linux man-pages project > said more about this, either directly in that page or maybe in the > man(7) they provide, with a conspicuous pointer there from the former. > > Maybe Michael or Alejandro can advise regarding where they think a good > place for a man page utilization tutorial would be. If any place, I think intro(1) would be most appropriate, or, failing that, an initial sentence that points the reader at another page (that could be added in man-pages). My guiding principle would be that the guidance given should be simple (introductory and not comprehensive), finishing with pointers to man(1) and/or less(1) for further details. The current intro(1) is an odd page though. Andries Brouwer made some steps to turning into a general "intro to Linux" page, but that was, to my mind, always going to be an impossibly huge scope. I'm not a huge fan of what is there. > I also wonder if the pager wars are basically over and less(1) won them. That's certainly what I thought... > I haven't heard anyone mention most(1) in a long time[2], and the, uh, > simple elegance of more(1)'s inability to seek its stream (meaning: no > backwards searching) seems to have driven many people to less(1) even if > they have reservations about the length of its feature list. I actually saw someone use more(1) the other day. I was surprised! (Okay, that person had been around UNIX for a _long_ time...) > [1] Michael Kerrisk can correct me, I hope, but as far as I know the > Linux man-pages man(7) page arose because, back in the '90s, the GNU > roff project refused to supply one, in keeping with the GNU "no > documentation at all if not Texinfo" philosophy--Susan G. Kleinmann > of Debian had to write one, which I guess escaped the notice of the > (Red Hat-using?) man-pages maintainer(s) of the time. By 1999, the > rigor of groff's fealty to that principle had slackened, and, > judging by groff's CVS-to-Git history, it looks like I can credit > Werner Lemberg with adopting and revising her work as groff_man(7). man(7) predates my involvement in the project. It written by the first maintainer, Rik Faith, and was part of the very first man-pages release, back in 1993! I do not know the rationale for its creation. Cheers, Michael > [2] a fate that seems to have inexorably claimed any project that > hitched its horses to S-Lang's wagon > -- Michael Kerrisk Linux man-pages maintainer; http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/ Linux/UNIX System Programming Training: http://man7.org/training/
