Is the help pager configurable?

[00-kat]

I noticed this line:

kitty/kitty/constants.py

Line 34 in 3f60ed4

default_pager_for_help = ('less', '-iRXF')

Based on the word default in its name, I assumed it would be configurable, but I can't figure out any way to do it. Grepping through the source code also doesn't reveal any configuration options.

Is this value configurable? (In my case, I want to make less use the alternate screen.) And if not, could it be made configurable?

[kovidgoyal]

The scrollback pager is configurable, the help pager is not. It *could* be made configurable, but I am not particularly keen to do so, on my TODO list is writing my own pager kitten that supports all the things less doesn't like images, variable font sizes etc, and is much higher performance and more robust. That said, it's going to be a while before my TODO list clears enough to get to that, so in the interim if you want an option for this, feel free to send a PR.

[00-kat]

A question: which section should the option be placed in? It doesn't fit in any of the categories that exist right now, and I don't see any place for miscellaneous options. The only section it could possibly fit in is advanced.

Edit: I see some options such as editor in the advanced section, so I'm going to put this option under that too, unless you say otherwise.

[kovidgoyal]

advanced is probably fine.

[00-kat]

Actually, I have decided to not do this, since currently the configuration file isn't parsed for things like --help¹, and parsing the entire configuration file just for something this small seems very wasteful to me.

Footnotes

1. It appears to be parsed a little while after the CLI options are parsed and handled; for the main application it seems like it happens just after the GLFW window is initialised, and I'm not certain exactly where it happens for kittens. ↩

[kovidgoyal]

yes, config file parsing is done after CLI parsing since the location of the config file can be changed by CLI args and --override cli options. For purposes of showing --help output one can ignore these and just parse the default config file. For kittens you would need to use the kitty.conf parsing infrastructure to read this option in ShowHelpInPager(). kittens running inside kitty actually parse the final resolved options of that kitty instance via a temp file that kitty maintains for them. For kittens this wont be a big overhead as the parser just parses the value you are interested in and ignore the rest.

But yes it is a lot of work just for a minor usecase which is why I have never done it.