Re: Bug#363250: general: Custom PAGER gives error on sid, but works on sarge

[Loïc Minier <lool+debian@via.ecp.fr>]

        Hi,

On Sat, Apr 22, 2006, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> > Please read again the original report, the submitter wanted to have
> > a pipe of commands in $PAGER, he said this worked in the past, and
> > works on other distros.  He did not want to simply be able to use
> > $PAGER on a file or to pipe stuff to $PAGER, he wanted $PAGER to be
> > parsed as a pipeline, as in sh syntax.
>         I read it. I still think that my answer suffices: Put your
>  pipeline in a script, and set that to PAGER.  If I have a file that I
>  want the users to see, as opposed to output I create, how can I
>  figure out how to use the example in the initial bug report?

 The point is that it used to work with a pipeline, as explained by the
 submitter, in the past and now it doesn't work, I later replied that it
 was never said that the content of $PAGER was following sh syntax.

 You propose a (valid) workaround, I propose to fix the policy, and to
 even actually support sh syntax (as this is trivial to do from
 sensible-pager).

>         There are two use cases that any pager directive must address:
>     1) The program is going to generate output which must be piped to
>        a pager
>     2) The program want to send a file to the user.

 I agree that these use cases need to be supported.

>         If the PAGER semantics are defined to state that whatever you
>  change it to must work in the two use cases, then programs that use
>  PAGER directly would not have an issue.

 But, if I follow you, this would prevent pipelines.

>         But perhaps the policy for Debian should be for programs to
>  ignore PAGER and just use sensible pager, where all the logic for
>  dealing with pager goes in. I still don't see how sensible pager can
>  handle the pipeline vs the non-pipeline case, though.

 Yes, I believe the policy should be changed in this way, and as I
 proposed.

 Look at the code of sensible-pager, it will call "$PAGER" if
 sensible-pager is called without any argument, and "$PAGER <filename>"
 if it's called as "sensible-pager <filename>".  This seems good enough
 for me; if people set $PAGER to a pipeline, they might suffer from
 problems for the second case, but we can work on that.

>         Barring that, policy would have to be that programs can' t
>  user PAGER to work with use case 2, and must be guilty of an "useless
>  use of cat" to pipe data to STDIN for PAGER.

 Yes, if you mean that permitting pipelines forbids programs to call
 "$PAGER $file", I agree with you.  There are multiple ways to solve
 this, but I think that whatever way is chosen should be implemented in
 sensible-pager, and we can even change our mind later, and fix only
 sensible-pager.  The contract of sensible-pager with respect to Debian
 programs should be to offer two modes of operation, the pipe of data on
 stdin mode, and the pass a file on the command line mode (matching your
 use cases 1 and 2).

>         PAGER has the benefit of being long standardized, and if we do
>  not use PAGER, we are breaking user expectations.
>         What is the benefit of creating a PAGER clone?

 sensible-pager is not a PAGER clone, it permits us to enhance the
 handling of $PAGER in a single place instead of changing every program
 in Debian that wants to send something to $PAGER.

 Have a look at the sensible-browser code, and at #351901 to convince
 you that there are useful things that can be done in such a nice place
 as sensible-pager.  Eg, we might send data to "yelp" if running under
 GNOME.

> > B/ user configuration of the pager When defined, $PAGER is a sh
> > pipeline which reads its data from stdin.
>         How do programs present a text file to the user using a PAGER,
>  then? cat file.txt | $PAGER?

 That's a question for sensible-pager to solve, but one way is to use
 cat "$@" | $PAGER indeed.

> > This is with the intent of moving any logic for deciding of the best
> > pager to run out of each individual program requiring a pager,
> > exactly as in the sensible-browser case, which can consider
> > $BROWSER, $DISPLAY, x-www-browser, and www-browser to find a
> > sensible browser.
>         In other words, ignore $PAGER, use sensible-pager all over,
>  and let that handle it?

 Yes.

>         Not, unless these questions are answered, and we actually have
>  a working implementation.

 Well the current implementation works, except for pipelines.  :)

   Bye,
-- 
Loïc Minier <lool@dooz.org>
"You can gtk_main_run, but you can't gtk_widget_hide." --danw, 19-jul-04