NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #16/NN_1992_16.iso/spool/alt/gopher/1045

Internet Message Format | 1992-07-22 | 2.0 KB

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From: [e-mail] (Chris Lang)
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 13:43:26 -0400
References: bert desimone <[e-mail]>
       "Is Less Really More?" (Jul 22, 12: 38pm)
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Subject: Re: Is Less Really More?
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bert desimone <[e-mail]> writes:
> OK, let's say you have an environment varaible set for PAGER. Some
> people like to set this to less so that man and other utilites that
> look for this variable will use less.  Now, you leave the PAGER_COMMAND
> for the Gopher client -- set in conf.h -- as more.  Crank up Gopher,
> and behold the Pager command. It is less.  No problem??  Well, there
> seem to be a few.  The main one has to do with the way that less
> handles, or rather doesn't handle, the character sequences used for
> toggling screen highlighting for search terms in retrieved documents.
> Instead of the highlighting action taking place, the highlighting
> characters are displayed (..this is the ^[[7mterm^[[m searched for..).

This problem can be solved by using the 'r' and 'f' options to less.  Try
setting your LESS environment variable to '-rf'.  The -r option causes less
to enter 'raw' mode, where it passes the control characters through unchanged,
and -f forces it not to treat the file as a binary file, which it ordinarily
would if it saw the control characters in the file.

However, while that will fix 'less' for use with Gopher, I second the
suggestion of adding a GOPHER_PAGER variable, particularly since I don't
want to leave 'r' and 'f' in my global LESS variable.

Hope this helps anyone else who would rather use 'less' as their Gopher
pager...

 -Chris