A pager

When I try with the following script things are normal:

#!/bin/sh
sed -e 's/\x1B\[[[:digit:]]\+m//g' | \
vim \
    -c 'let no_plugin_maps = 1' \
    -c 'set nolist nomod ft=man' \
    -c 'let g:showmarks_enable=0' \
    -c 'runtime! macros/less.vim' -

I'm not sure what role col plays in the sequence, but it is certainly messing up the spaces. Until somebody gives a better solution, this will be my fix.

Edit: so col was the problem because it "replaces white-space characters with tabs where possible". To fix this tell col to use spaces instead of tabs with the -x option. The final config is as follow (with credit to Gilles).

#!/bin/sh
sed -e 's/\x1B\[[[:digit:]]\+m//g' | col -bx | \
vim \
    -c 'let no_plugin_maps = 1' \
    -c 'set nolist nomod ft=man' \
    -c 'let g:showmarks_enable=0' \
    -c 'runtime! macros/less.vim' -

I don't know if it is possible. But...

a couple of workaround are there:

• in gnome-terminal you can see previous pages with Shift-PgUp / Shift-PgDn

• if you use screen, you can see previous pages entering copy mode with Ctrl-a Esc, then moving around with PgUp, PgDn and other vi commands (to exit from copy mode, Esc).