dired-aux.el better nroff suggestion

dired-aux.el better nroff suggestion

[jidanni]

! runs the command dired-do-shell-command
  which is an interactive compiled Lisp function in `dired-aux.el'.

which when placed on top of kernel-img.conf.5.gz
suggests     gunzip -qc * | tbl | nroff -man -h
when in fact gunzip -qc * | tbl | nroff -man -h | col -b
is needed, unless one likes ^H's, which are what one sees lots of
currently. Not sure the fate of non-ASCII though with col -b.

And it should be
gunzip -qc * |tbl|nroff -man -h|col -b
with less spaces as minibuffer space is at a premium.

bug#172: dired-aux.el better nroff suggestion

[Glenn Morris]

Version: 24.0.94

OK; added col -b.

Re: dired-aux.el better nroff suggestion

[Sven Joachim]

On 2008-05-01 06:23 +0200, jidanni@jidanni.org wrote:

> ! runs the command dired-do-shell-command
>   which is an interactive compiled Lisp function in `dired-aux.el'.
>
> which when placed on top of kernel-img.conf.5.gz
> suggests     gunzip -qc * | tbl | nroff -man -h
> when in fact gunzip -qc * | tbl | nroff -man -h | col -b
> is needed, unless one likes ^H's, which are what one sees lots of
> currently. Not sure the fate of non-ASCII though with col -b.

Where did you get these suggestions from?  In stock Emacs -Q, there are
no suggestions at all, and if you load dired-x, there are only "man -l"
and "gunzip -q".

Re: dired-aux.el better nroff suggestion

[jidanni]

SJ> Where did you get these suggestions from?  In stock Emacs -Q, there are
SJ> no suggestions at all, and if you load dired-x, there are only "man -l"
SJ> and "gunzip -q".

All I know is
$ zgrep zip.*nroff /usr/share/emacs/22.2/lisp/dired-x.el.gz
"gunzip -qc * | tbl | nroff -man -h"))

My personal configuration files are in
http://jidanni.org/comp/configuration/index.html

Re: dired-aux.el better nroff suggestion

[Sven Joachim]

On 2008-05-02 00:29 +0200, jidanni@jidanni.org wrote:

> SJ> Where did you get these suggestions from?  In stock Emacs -Q, there are
> SJ> no suggestions at all, and if you load dired-x, there are only "man -l"
> SJ> and "gunzip -q".
>
> All I know is
> $ zgrep zip.*nroff /usr/share/emacs/22.2/lisp/dired-x.el.gz
> "gunzip -qc * | tbl | nroff -man -h"))

I see.  The value is determined by Man-support-local-filenames:

 (if (Man-support-local-filenames)
     "man -l"
   "gunzip -qc * | tbl | nroff -man -h"))

I don't have an idea why Man-support-local-filenames returns nil for you
and t for me, but you can set the corresponding variable to t in your
.emacs.

Piping the nroff output through col -b seems reasonable in any case
though, since Emacs cannot currently display overstriked text well,
AFAIK.  But on some systems (e.g., Windows) col might not exist, since
it's part of the bsdmainutils rather than coreutils.

Sven

Re: dired-aux.el better nroff suggestion

[jidanni]

SJ> you can set Man-support-local-filenames to t in your .emacs.
OK much nicer. No need for col -b now too.

P.S.,
SJ> I don't have an idea why Man-support-local-filenames returns nil for you

OK, on Debian sid emacs -Q M-x man who, then C-h v
Man-support-local-filenames ... is a variable defined in `man.el'. Its
value is auto-detect

What is weird is though one can do describe-variable
Man-support-local-filenames, one cannot do
M-x set-variable:
Set variable: Man-support-local-filenames [No match] (CARRIAGE RETURN not accepted)
must have something to do with
   Documentation:
   Internal cache for the value of the function `Man-support-local-filenames'.
   `auto-detect' means the value is not yet determined.

So this is a different bug: with M-x one can describe-variable but cannot
set-variable for that same variable. "Not determined" or not.

RE: dired-aux.el better nroff suggestion

[Drew Adams]

> So this is a different bug: with M-x one can 
> describe-variable but cannot
> set-variable for that same variable. "Not determined" or not.

`set-variable' is only for user options. The variable in question is probably
not a user option.

,----[ C-h f set-variable RET ]
| set-variable is an interactive compiled Lisp function in `simple+.el'.
| 
| (set-variable VAR VAL &optional MAKE-LOCAL)
| 
| Set VARIABLE to VALUE.  VALUE is a Lisp object.
| When using this interactively, enter a Lisp object for VALUE.
| If you want VALUE to be a string, you must surround it with doublequotes.
| VALUE is used literally, not evaluated.
| 
| If VARIABLE has a `variable-interactive' property, that is used as if
| it were the arg to `interactive' (which see) to interactively read VALUE.
| 
| If VARIABLE has been defined with `defcustom', then the type information
| in the definition is used to check that VALUE is valid.
| 
| With a prefix argument, set VARIABLE to VALUE buffer-locally.
| 
`----

Re: dired-aux.el better nroff suggestion

[jidanni]

DA> `set-variable' is only for user options. The variable in question is probably
DA> not a user option.
So then I shouldn't be setting it in .emacs either?! but it worked so nice...