Subject: Re: bug#9385: 23.3; [feature request] Man-max-width

From: Juri Linkov <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2011 03:27:55 +0300

> I've been using the following advice because emacs will often format
> manpages at the full 200+ columns occupied by my frame, which makes
> lines unreadably long.  I would simply customize Man-width to 90, but
> then the page will overflow any narrower windows I happen to have.
> Frankly, IMO, I would prefer that setting Man-width to 90 would specify
> a maximum width, or maybe better yet, that manpages would dynamically
> reformat to fit their windows, but failing that and if backward
> compatibility is a concern there should be a separate way to set the
> maximum width of manpage formatting.
>
> (defadvice Man-getpage-in-background
>   (around Man-narrow-please activate compile preactivate)
>   (let ((Man-width (when (> (window-width) 90) 90)))
>     ad-do-it))

We could add a new option to the existing defcustom `Man-width',
e.g. (cons :tag "Maximum width" (const :value max) (integer :value 80))

But instead of that as you noted above that "better yet, that manpages
would dynamically reformat to fit their windows" is possible to do
as discussed in bug#2588.