Re: help exit

[Daniel J S. <dan...@ie...>]

Hans-Bernhard Br=F6ker wrote:
> Daniel J Sebald wrote:
>=20
>> Eh, displaying multiple times isn't professional looking.  In some=20
>> way, we can think of the topic as a "header".  As you point out, we=20
>> really don't want to print it as part of the help text.  Rather, what=20
>> would be nice, if possible, is if the pager had it's own kind of=20
>> header, e.g., at the top of the terminal is the header in bold while=20
>> the text scrolls underneath it.  Is that possible?
>=20
>=20
> No --- if only because we have no control over what the $PAGER chosen b=
y=20
> the user might be.  IIRC we have our own fall-back pager implementation=
=20
> in which such things could be done, but I would have to strictly oppose=
=20
> any change that made gnuplot ignore $PAGER, or only work "properly" if=20
> $PAGER wasn't set.

Yes, I suppose.  Then an orderly convention would be the only alternative=
.  It=20
might mean going through the gnuplot.doc and clearing out first lines of =
help=20
that say, e.g., "gnuplot-variable":... that is, if there are any.

But seriously, programming alternate behavior wouldn't be that difficult.=
  If=20
gnuplot's pager is active then don't print the first (or last) line "TOPI=
C:=20
<help>" but create a header if possible.  Not suggesting that, just argui=
ng it=20
would be easy.  And possibly, as the pager seems like a configurable thin=
g=20
already, perhaps an environment variable could be set to turn off the pri=
nting=20
of "TOPIC: <help>".  You'd think that advanced pagers would have a header=
=20
convention, but maybe not.

Dan