Re: page-at-a-time output for M-x shell

[Barry Margolin]

In article 
<19dfd9e3-c7ad-4680-bfb7-2d25f79fca91@o36g2000vbl.googlegroups.com>,
 Francis Moreau <francis.moro@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 14 juil, 05:12, Barry Margolin <bar...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> > In article
> > <0eab476b-cd5f-444d-b2af-d82ac076e...@r34g2000vba.googlegroups.com>,
> >  Francis Moreau <francis.m...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > > On Jul 13, 11:04 am, Peter Dyballa <Peter_Dyba...@Web.DE> wrote:
> > > > Am 13.07.2009 um 10:03 schrieb Francis Moreau:
> >
> > > > > I never claim to have a splendid idea. I just found weird that this is
> > > > > not offered by M-x shell, whereas it is by M-x term...
> >
> > > > The one offers an environment to run a shell interpreter  
> > > > interactively in it,
> >
> > > OK, so what am I supposed to run in this shell interpreter ?
> >
> > > I can understand that I can't start mutt or any other appli that needs
> > > all term environment in M-x shell, but the feature I'm asking is not
> > > specific to term emulation, it's just a goodies to make life easier
> > > when reading the _text_ output of any commands I start from this shell
> > > interpreter.
> >
> > Why do you need a pager, when the Emacs shell buffer allows you to page
> > back and forward through the output, search it, etc.?
> 
> Ok, let me ask you one question: why do anybody use ('| less') in all
> term emulation whereas they all have the PgUp/PgDw functionality ?

Terminal emulators often have a scrollback limit.  Also, you can search 
for things with "less", you can't easily search in the emulator window.  
Or maybe you can -- I've been using more and less since the days of real 
terminals, so that's where my habits got formed.

> 
> because it's obviously not convenient.
> 
> It's not convenient because a) you get the wanted result without any
> user interventions (search, key press...) b) the command which outputs
> the data is stopped as soon as the reader stops to read the produced
> data.

I agree with these points, too.  Scrollback in some terminal emulators 
doesn't work well if the output is still going -- sometimes they spring 
you back to the end, or the position moves as the end moves, etc.  

Pagers give more control, but you get all the same control in Emacs.

Actually, I generally try to avoid running programs that produce lots of 
output in my shell buffer.  I'll usually run them with M-! so they go to 
their own buffer.

-- 
Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
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