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

From: "Drew Adams" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 8 Mar 2009 13:17:04 -0700

> > 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?

The motivation expressed by that commentary is itself misguided.

How the page will actually be displayed (in terms of window/frame size) is
irrelevant to how to format the buffer text. That is precisely the mistake that
is being made here.

IOW, the problem is not just that the code is inadequate to the intention. The
problem is that the intention itself is misguided.