fix(man.vim): hide signcolumn to avoid broken wrap #28775
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| setlocal foldcolumn=0 colorcolumn=0 nolist nofoldenable | ||
| " man page content is likely preformatted for the terminal width, so | ||
| " narrowing display by any additional columns leads to Embarrassing Line Wrap | ||
| setlocal nonumber norelativenumber foldcolumn=0 signcolumn=auto |
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disabling random things is not ideal. instead, find where the width (MANWIDTH, iirc) is calculated in this plugin, and adjust it
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I don't think MANWIDTH is controlled by plugin when calling man from CLI. Personally, I have MANPAGER set in my environment as described in :help man, and just call man echo in bash (see steps to reproduce).
Note, that this PR only adds signcolumn=auto (may be easier to see when viewing separate commits). Other "random things" (visual columns occupied by editor's UI, to be precise) are already disabled. Suggested changes follow the existing approach and improve it (I believe), not aiming to seek for ideal.
If someone decide to spend time finding an "ideal" solution, they could still benefit from these changes by using them as a reference. E. g. just like they will see "nonumber", "norelativenumber", "foldcolumn" and include the width of these columns into their calculations of MANWIDTH (or whatever is relevant), they will also see the "signcolumn" and remember to take it into account as well.
Also, IMHO, benefits of what you call an "ideal" approach are questionable. ftplugins are specifically intended to improve user experience with specific filetypes by taking into account the meaning of the file type. Disabling/enabling specific things for specific filetypes feels totally reasonable for me. Do you think that other setlocal options are not ideal should be avoided in this ftplugin (e. g. nolist)?
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This is fine, since we already were doing nonumber norelativenumber, and :Man always opens a new window anyway (otherwise restoring window-local options is tricky).
why signcolumn=auto instead of signcolumn=no ?
Problem: 1. multiple `setlocal` commands are spread across the script. 2. several options, apparently, serve the same purpose (hide UI columns) which may not be immediately clear. more options may be required to fullfill the same purpose or they could be removed all together as a group if better solution is found later 3. `setlocal nofoldenable` may be overriden by conditional block later in the script. Solution: 1. move 'colorcolumn' and 'nolist' to the group of other options at the beginning 2. add an explanatory comment about options that disable UI columns 3. move 'nofoldenable' to the if-else block to keep relevant commands coupled
Problem: It's a common practice to set 'signcolumn=yes' (always show) instead of default 'signcolumn=auto' in order to prevent annoying horizontal shifting in editable buffers when using some popular plugins that add/remove signs on the fly. This makes signcolumn always visible and breaks the text flow of pre-formatted man pages, even when no signs are actually defined. Some other options are already tweaked in man.vim to address the issue (e.g. 'nonumber'), but not signcolumn. Solution: set 'signcolumn=auto' in ftplugin/man.vim. By default there is no |signs| in man pages anyway (and I am not aware of any plugins that could define them in man pages), so 'signcolumn=auto' should behave like 'signcolumn=no', i.e. hide the empty column in order to keep buffer width same as terminal width. In a (rare?) case when user does define some signs in man pages, signcolumn will appear (breaking the text flow).
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justinmk
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This is how man page looks like when using neovim as a man pager and having
signcolumn=yes. Note the line wraps in Description:Note: I did not resize the window after running the command.
Steps to reproduce:
set signcolumn=yesin~/.config/nvim/init.vimMANPAGER='nvim +Man!' man manThe suggested solution is to
set signcolumn=autoinftplugin/man.vim, because man pages are especially sensitive to terminal width.manhard-wraps content (using terminal width as a default value for MANWIDTH), not taking pager's UI into account (the default MANPAGER isless, which displays content at full width of the terminal)ftplugin/man.vimalready contains similar options (e.g.set nonumber) to address the issue. The benefit of those tweaks is lost if ANY of UI columns appear.