mercurial/help/pager.txt

pager: use less as a fallback on Unix

This seems reasonable choice per discussion, and the default-default of Git.
See also the inline-comment for why.

https://www.mercurial-scm.org/pipermail/mercurial-devel/2017-April/097042.html

Some Mercurial commands produce a lot of output, and Mercurial will
attempt to use a pager to make those commands more pleasant.

To set the pager that should be used, set the application variable::

  [pager]
  pager = less -FRX

If no pager is set, the pager extensions uses the environment variable
$PAGER. If neither pager.pager, nor $PAGER is set, a default pager
will be used, typically `less` on Unix and `more` on Windows.

You can disable the pager for certain commands by adding them to the
pager.ignore list::

  [pager]
  ignore = version, help, update

To ignore global commands like :hg:`version` or :hg:`help`, you have
to specify them in your user configuration file.

To control whether the pager is used at all for an individual command,
you can use --pager=<value>::

  - use as needed: `auto`.
  - require the pager: `yes` or `on`.
  - suppress the pager: `no` or `off` (any unrecognized value
  will also work).

To globally turn off all attempts to use a pager, set::

  [pager]
  enable = false

which will prevent the pager from running.