Subject: bug#23169: 24.5; Inconsistent text reflow in man pages depending on window configuration

From: Juri Linkov <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 01 Apr 2016 22:51:30 +0300

>> > The usual way to fix these problems is to set Man-width to a non-nil
>> > value, as appropriate for your frame/window dimensions.  Would that
>> > solve the problem for you?
>>
>> Thing is I don't know the width of the window that will be used, since in some
>> cases it does not exist yet:
>>
>>   +-----+                   +--+--+
>>   |     |                   |  |  |
>>   |     | -> M-x man man -> |  |  |
>>   |     |                   |  |  |
>>   +-----+                   +--+--+
>
> Isn't the window that man will use half of the window before the
> command?  Then you know the width in advance, because you are familiar
> with your window and frame configurations
>
>> The ideal without breaking the asynchronicity would be to somehow display the
>> new buffer on a window before populating it (display-buffer might or might not
>> reuse a window here), calculate its window's width, set COLUMNS, asynchronously
>> call man to populate the buffer, and then really show the buffer on the previous
>> window.
>>
>> The only problem is that creating a temporary window just to calculate its width
>> could annoy people because the contents won't be shown yet.
>
> Yes, that's the problem.

That was the problem in 24.5 indeed, but fortunately it's fixed in 25.