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

From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2016 19:48:47 +0300

> From: Lluís <[email-masked]>
> Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2016 15:15:15 +0200
> 
> Before the man process is started, "Man-start-calling" calculates the "COLUMNS"
> envvar using "window-width" before splitting windows. The window split happens
> later once the process finishes, and the buffer is shown through
> "Man-notify-when-ready".
> 
> Assuming the buffer is going to be shown on a vertical split, the text will go
> beyond the window limits if there was no other window in the frame (or if a new
> window is used), or will be reflowed with the proper width if an existing window
> is reused.
> 
> Manually calling "Man-update-manpage" fixes it, but it's annoying. Simply adding
> a call to "Man-update-manpage" in "Man-notify-when-ready" would fix it
> ("(with-current-buffer man-buffer (Man-update-manpage))" in the "friendly" case
> for me).
> 
> As a bonus, this fix also reflows the text when an existing buffer is reused.

Maybe I'm missing something, but won't your suggestion effectively
replace the background rendering of man pages with fully synchronous
one?

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?