mercurial/help/pager.txt

help: document color/pager pitfalls on Windows

Even though I figured this out a few weeks ago, I was initially puzzled where
the color went when I upgraded to 4.2 on a different Windows machine.  Let's
point users reading the help into the right direction.

I wonder if we should be even more explicit about cmd.exe/MSYS/pager/color
interplay, but at least all of the breadcrumbs are here (I think).

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, Mercurial 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.

.. container:: windows

  On Windows, `more` is not color aware, so using it effectively disables color.
  MSYS and Cygwin shells provide `less` as a pager, which can be configured to
  support ANSI color codes.  See :hg:`help config.color.pagermode` to configure
  the color mode when invoking a pager.

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::

  [ui]
  paginate = never

which will prevent the pager from running.