Subject: Re: bug#2588: 23.0.90; Man buffer improperly formatted - wrong width

From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 08 Mar 2009 22:03:38 +0200

> From: Stefan Monnier <[email-masked]>
> Cc: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>,  [email-masked],  Drew Adams <[email-masked]>
> Date: Sun, 08 Mar 2009 15:43:39 -0400
> 
> > This is explained in the code comments: it's required to ensure that the
> > output of the manpage formatter has the same number of columns as the
> > Emacs window/frame.
> 
> Well, that part I understood, even without the comment ;-)
> The question is: what was the motivation to adjust the number of columns
> to that of the Emacs window/frame?

Does the following comment from man.el explain it to you?

	  ;; This isn't strictly correct, since we don't know how
	  ;; the page will actually be displayed, but it seems
	  ;; reasonable.

Translation: don't have a better idea, so why not?