Re: [PATCH] Enable pager by default

[Daniel Kiper]

On Thu, Oct 24, 2019 at 06:54:53AM +0000, Michael Chang wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 22, 2019 at 04:04:28PM +0200, Daniel Kiper wrote:
> > On Tue, Oct 22, 2019 at 10:30:20AM +0200, Javier Martinez Canillas wrote:
> > > Hello Daniel,
> > >
> > > On 10/21/19 4:56 PM, Daniel Kiper wrote:
> > > > On Fri, Oct 18, 2019 at 02:43:18PM +0200, Javier Martinez Canillas 
> > > > wrote:
> > > >> From: Peter Jones <address@hidden>
> > > >>
> > > >> When user enters into the GRUB shell and tries to use help command, 
> > > >> lot of
> > > >> information is scrolled out of screen and the user doesn't have chance 
> > > >> to
> > > >> read it. Also, there isn't any information about 'set pager=1' at the 
> > > >> end
> > > >> of the help output, to tell the user how scrolling could be enabled.
> > > >>
> > > >> So just enable pager by default which leads to a much better 
> > > >> experience.
> > > >
> > > > Hmmm... What will happen if a command produce tons of output during boot
> > > > process? I am afraid that it will hang indefinitely waiting for an user
> > > > input. This should not happen. So, I tend to agree that current help
> > > > command behavior is annoying but I do not like the solution.
> > >
> > > Ok. I'll then explore having a paginated output only for the help command
> > > instead of globally enabling it by default.
> >
> > Great! Though I would think about something which can be used also in
> > other commands producing a lot of output. Maybe we should introduce "-p"
> > (pause) command line option for such commands. And I am not against
> > using existing code to do a pause. We just have to do it carefully.
>
> I'd like to add option to the list, which is grub could provide the
> information to have the commands able to tell they are executed in
> shell's interactive (aka command-line) or batch mode. After they could
> turn on/off paginated output according to the shell mode they are with.

Sounds interesting. However, I would go further. If pager == 1 and we are
in batch mode then paging is inactive. If pager == 2 and we are in batch
mode then paging is active. If we are in interactive mode then if
pager != 0 then paging is active.

Daniel