My 2c: if Nix offers a way to disable the pager then I'd rather see 1% of users for such needs to make the bash alias instead of the other way around. On 2 Jan 2015 02:36, "Ertugrul Söylemez" <ert...@gmx.de> wrote:
> Hi everybody, > > since Nix 1.8 much of the output of nix commands is piped through > `less`, which is certainly meant to be a convenience, but that > convenience depends on a few assumptions: > > * the user uses a crappy terminal emulator, > * the user is interested in all of the output, > * the user reads using their eyes. > > The first assumption is wrong for me and probably for a lot of other > people as well. The second assumption is wrong for me most of the time; > in most cases only the last few lines are interesting. The third one is > wrong for blind people. If they can't afford an external braille > terminal (not those single-line pads, which are expensive enough, but a > real terminal), they will rely on text-to-speech. > > If not all three assumptions hold, then this "feature" makes Nix > consistently `less` convenient to use. Not only do I have to press `q` > now, but `less` is an ncurses program, which means that the output > disappears after quitting. This does not happen when I just use my > terminal emulator to scroll, and yes, most of them if not all allow > scrolling with the keyboard (commonly Shift+PageUp and Shift+PageDown). > > Furthermore we hold in our hands an operating system that follows the > Unix philosophy, which is about composability. There is simply no need > to precompose everything with `less`. As humans we are smart beings, > and we have a powerful shell, so that every user can decide for > themselves when to use a pager. > > Also remember that we may have disabled users. A blind person will > dislike this new anti-feature even more than I do, because `less` is not > exactly a text-to-speech-friendly program. > > Feature request 1: Please do your part in saving the software world and > remove this anti-feature. Don't even consider making it optional. It's > useless. Remove it. In the future, whenever you think that some > UX-related automation will make things easier, think again. You are > most likely wrong. Just look at the huge damage that Microsoft has done > by assuming that users are complete idiots. > > Feature request 2: Also I strongly believe that `--help` should > absolutely never open a man-page. When we need a manual, we will use > the `man` command, but in most cases we just need a quick reminder of > what that one option was called that we're failing to recall, so I would > much prefer the original purpose of the `--help` option: Print a short > summary to the terminal. > > If this appears superficial to you, please remember that many little bad > things can do a lot of damage in the long run. The purpose of this post > is to wake everybody up before it's too late. > > I hope that some people agree with me, and if yes, I will turn these > into actual feature requests on Github. I'm also happy to help with > implementing the latter one, because writing a good `--help` system for > commands with subcommands is not necessarily easy. > > > Greets, > Ertugrul > _______________________________________________ > nix-dev mailing list > nix-dev@lists.science.uu.nl > http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev >
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