How does man know?

[John M. Sellens]

>No, $PAGER should never have been in man(1).  Simple paging should have
>been in the terminal driver (it's a form of flow control, after all)
>and any other paging should have been done with explicit pipelines.


It's all very well and good to say that paging should be in the terminal
or the terminal driver, but the simple fact of the matter is that in
most cases it isn't.  And since it is pretty much a given that terminals
and terminal drivers don't do paging, it's silly to argue what man
should do under those circumstances.  Better we should discuss what
man should do under the conditions we live under.

(Me? I think paging by default is a good thing and that if someone
doesn't want paging then MANPAGER=/bin/cat would seem to me to suffice.)