Subject: Re: bug#32536: displayed width of man pages

From: hw <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 02 Sep 2018 16:55:25 +0200

Juri Linkov <[email-masked]> writes:

> [...]
> Regarding the request for dynamic reformatting, I'm not sure if
> man pages should be reformatted on resizing windows (I remember
> seeing a window resize hook, but can't find it now).

Perhaps if they /can/ be reformatted dynamically, have a variable like
`Man-dynamic-reformat-lines-max' so users can prevent the reformatting
for instances in which it takes too long.  Then a problem is that the
number of lines varies with the width of the page, and instead of the
number of lines, the size in bytes (kB, MB ...) of the page might be
more relevant for reformatting it.

Unfortunately, users usually have no idea what the size of a manual page
in bytes is, and the pages are even stored compressed.  Users would have
to try out what size makes sense to dynamically reformat on their
particular hardware and may end up simply turning the feature off
because they do not resize windows while reading manual pages anyway.

Does it take longer to format the same manual page into 2500 lines or
into 5000 lines?

Would it be possible to do the reformatting in the background, and
delayed, like fontifying a buffer?