Re: [groff] Regularize (sub)section cross references.

[G. Branden Robinson]

At 2018-12-17T08:21:40+1100, John Gardner wrote:
> *> How does the importance of that compare to the trouble caused for screen
> readers etc.?*
> 
> Heh. It doesn't. =) Put simply, if you're searching for human text in
> prose, you'll almost always want a case-insensitive search.

Recent discussion revealed that Ingo and I agree that less(1) is pretty
much part of the man page experience on terminals, so it's a bit bizarre
that the program doesn't support this as well as it should.

You have to know ahead of time that you want a case-insensitive search
and call less with the "-i" flag.

I've become quite spoiled by Vim's \c flag to the pattern-matcher:

       */\c* */\C*
When "\c" appears anywhere in the pattern, the whole pattern is handled like
'ignorecase' is on.  The actual value of 'ignorecase' and 'smartcase' is
ignored.  "\C" does the opposite: Force matching case for the whole pattern.
{only Vim supports \c and \C}

If we could get Mark Nudelman to support these escapes in less, it would
help.

Until and unless that happens, there is man-db man(1)'s MANPAGER option,
which people could set to "less -i" or ordinary "less" as they prefer.
mandoc man seems to support this too.  Since Colin Watson and Ingo are
both here, perhaps they could comment on the wisdom of switching to
case-insensitive default searches.

Regards,
Branden

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