GNU bug report logs - #12098
Optionally support synchronous operation for `M-x man'

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From: Andy Moreton <andrewjmoreton <at> gmail.com>
To: 12098 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#12098: How to trap errors in man?
Date: Wed, 01 Aug 2012 10:05:59 +0100

On Wed 01 Aug 2012, Reuben Thomas wrote:

> On 1 August 2012 01:15, Juri Linkov <juri <at> jurta.org> wrote:
>>
>> The Emacs Info reader can format man pages with the help
>> of info-man.el.
>
> This doesn't appear to be standard.
>
>>> Personally, I'd just rip out all the asynchronous stuff and make "man"
>>> synchronous (I have man set to "bully" mode in my setup), but I am
>>> guessing that would be an unpopular change,
>>
>> Yes, the delay when the whole session is freezing during formatting would
>> be undesirable.
>
> There are plenty of things that freeze the session for much longer
> than the fraction of a second it takes to format most man pages! Even
> bash(1) only takes about a second. What workflow do you have in mind
> where a user starts a man page and then does something else for at
> most a few seconds? The idea of requesting some documentation and then
> doing something else for a few seconds is a bit odd to me…

things freezing for any reason should be something to be removed
everywhere, not an excuse for allowing more badness.

Async fetching and formatting of man pages is very useful if the man
page is on a remote host running a different OS.

   AndyM

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