Re: [PATCH] Enable pager by default

[Daniel Kiper]

On Fri, Oct 25, 2019 at 11:02:04AM +0200, Javier Martinez Canillas wrote:
> Hello Daniel,
>
> On 10/24/19 4:50 PM, Daniel Kiper wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> >>
> >> From 7c4da6295ebd3a034d1f7e32099eab33efa465d4 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
> >> From: Javier Martinez Canillas <address@hidden>
> >> Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2019 15:35:12 +0200
> >> Subject: [PATCH v2] Add a GRUB_COMMAND_FLAG_PAGINATED to request paginated
> >>  output for commands
> >>
> >> 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.
> >>
> >> Since the out for some commands may not fit into a screen, add a new flag
> >> GRUB_COMMAND_FLAG_PAGINATED that can be used when registering commands that
> >> can be used to request the pager to be enabled while executing the handler.
> >>
> >> Signed-off-by: Javier Martinez Canillas <address@hidden>
> >
> > In general I like the idea but I think patch requires some polishing...
> >
> > Hmmm... Still thinking about "-p" flag which allows user to choose
> > between pager on/off. Or something which I proposed in the email to
> > Michael...
>
> I'm OK with any of the other two approaches too. But it seems that Vladimir
> is worried about the added complexity for these.
>
> I honestly think that the approach in this patch is the least bad option since
> it doesn't require a special configuration or the user to do anything, just
> execute the command printing a lot of stuff and get paginated output by 
> default.
>
> Can't think why users would want to execute commands that print a lot of 
> messages
> without the output being paginated, or why they would want to execute a 
> command
> like help in in batch mode. It's only useful in interactive mode.
>
> And also the patch is quite trivial, it already uses all the existing code for
> the pager option.
>
> But I'll wait for the discussion to settle and a solution to be agreed upon,
> before posting a new patch for this.

After some thinking it seems to me that Valdimir is right and we should
not over-complicate the solution. Let's print the message on interactive
screen how to enable paging.

Daniel