Re: mutt/2185: In manual.xml, "screen" contents should not exceed
The following reply was made to PR mutt/2185; it has been noted by GNATS.
From: Derek Martin <invalid@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: bug-any@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc:
Subject: Re: mutt/2185: In manual.xml, "screen" contents should not exceed
Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2006 11:28:21 -0500
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On Wed, Feb 15, 2006 at 01:42:56PM +0100, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
> On 2006-02-14 09:10:34 -0500, Thomas Dickey wrote:
> > On Tue, 14 Feb 2006, vincent@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> > >whish takes 82 columns, and the generated manual.txt doesn't look
> > >nicely. Text in "screen" elements should not take more than 79 columns
> > >(80 is not OK due to a lynx bug[*], fixed only in the dev version).
> >
> > There's no point in citing a bug that was fixed more than a year ago.
>
> The latest lynx release (2.8.5) still has the bug.
More to the point, the bug is in lynx, not in mutt. It is debatable
whether the mutt developers should concern themselves with bugs in
optional ancillary programs, especially if a fix is already available,
whether or not there is an official release which contains the fix.
For example, it is quite common around here for people to suggest
running the latest CVS version of mutt in order to deal with some bug
that a user has found. Those are not releases, either; but the
community seems to consider that perfectly acceptable. As well they
should, I think.
That said, in the version of mutt I'm using (some random CVS version I
believe) some key binding descriptions are indented from the main
text, and some are not. For example, the key binding descriptions in
the section labeled "Editing Input Fields" are /not/ indented, and
they fit fine. The section labeled "Threaded Mode" /is/ indented, and
some lines do not fit; but they would if the indentation was removed.
Probably the best/easiest solution is to remove the indentation of the
sections that have it, in order to both make the lines fit, and make
the indentation consistent.
FWIW, if an HTML browser is going to be what is used to format the
manual text, then it might be better not to break the lines at all,
and let the viewer format them appropriately, changing the formatting
as necessary to compensate... After all, not everyone runs their
terminal at 80 columns, and (ideally) they should not be required to
in order to get a readable manual. HTML, and even man pages, have the
advantage that they are (or at least can be) formatted to fit the
user's screen, (mostly) without regard to how wide it is. For key
mapping descriptions, this could be done (for example) with something
like a dictionary list. The key binding goes in the term part, and
the description goes in (fittingly enough) the description. The
description would start with the name of the function bound to the
key, followed by a dash or a colon, then the description of what it
does. Or whatever. :)
While I'm on the subject of the manual, I downloaded 1.5.11 the other
day to run on a different machine (I didn't want to run CVS because of
all the recent activity -- and bug reports -- involving the IMAP
code), and I noticed that mutt seems to be looking for the manual text
in /doc/mutt/manual.txt instead of the install prefix. Presumably
this was fixed in CVS since the version on my laptop works fine...
But I thought I'd mention it anyway.
--
Derek D. Martin http://www.pizzashack.org/ GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02
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