Subject: 23.0.90; Man buffer improperly formatted - wrong width

From: "Drew Adams" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2009 12:51:59 -0800

emacs -Q
 
load library cygwin-mount.el, then setup-cygwin.el:
 
http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/cygwin-mount.el
http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/setup-cygwin.el
 
Use /bin/bash.exe as SHELL.
 
M-x set-variable RET pop-up-frames RET t
 
Resize the current frame so that it is, say, only 30 chars wide.
 
M-x man RET bash RET
 
Buffer *Man bash* is shown in a new frame. The frame has the usual
default width of 80 chars.  But the text of the buffer is formatted to
be only 30 chars wide.  Clearly a mismatch and not what a user
expects or intends.
 
This same bug exists for Emacs 22 (e.g. 22.3) and Emacs 21
(e.g. 21.3.1).  Emacs 20 (e.g. 20.7) has no such bug.  
 
In Emacs 21, the bug occurs even without loading the two Cywin helper
libraries.  With my SHELL var set to /bin/bash.exe, I cannot test
Emacs 22 or 23 without loading those libraries, but I suspect the same
bug occurs, as it does in Emacs 21.  IOW, I don't think this has
anything to do with using Cygwin.
 
Please don't suggest customizing `Man-frame-parameters' or some such.
This should just work, normally, with no need for any user tweaking.
Setting `pop-up-frames' to non-nil does not imply that you want the
Man output (in a normal-width frame) to have the same width as the
frame that was current when you called `man'.

In GNU Emacs 23.0.90.1 (i386-mingw-nt5.1.2600)
 of 2009-02-01 on SOFT-MJASON
Windowing system distributor `Microsoft Corp.', version 5.1.2600
configured using `configure --with-gcc (3.4)'