From: Mail@JoesLife.org   
      
   Hello Slackers,   
      
   I've been using Slackware64 15.0 for a while now.  Gee, has it been six   
   months?   
      
   Anyway, I noticed some differences when using man and less that have been   
   troubling me.  I didn't post about them sooner, because I suspected that   
   my troubles were my own fault.   
      
   I solved the problem with less just today.  (I'll post about man   
   separately.)  I had been using:   
      
      export PAGER="less -R"   
      export METAMAIL_PAGER="less -R"   
      export LESSCHARSET=latin1   
      
   although I don't remember exactly why.  I think one or more of these   
   lines were for the purpose of causing special characters to display   
   correctly in less.  These lines were in a script that I use everyday, but   
   haven't thought much about for a long time.  The script, incidentally   
   sets some environment variables.  I don't think it has any other   
   relevance to this post.  (Let's not go there now.  Dragging my script   
   into this discussion might get messy.)   
      
   I took these lines out and now less seems to work OK.   
      
   Can anyone explain what happened?  I don't fully understand it, and it is   
   just complex enough to leave me bamboozled.   
      
   The problem with less was that some special characters weren't displaying   
   correctly in Slackware64 15.0 (using my old script).  This problem didn't   
   happen in Slackware 14.2 (using my my old script).   
      
   Here are a few lines (made by lsblk) and displayed in less in Slackware64   
   15.0 using my old script:   
      
      NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS   
      sda      8:0    0 465.8G  0 disk   
      �<94><9C>�<94><80>sda1   8:1    0  21.4G  0 part   
      �<94><9C>�<94><80>sda2   8:2    0   953M  0 part   
      �<94><9C>�<94><80>sda3   8:3    0  11.2G  0 part   
      
      Note that the above lines are displayed differently by xterm--boxes   
   made of dots instead of the "?" symbols that my newsreader (pan)   
   displays.  I'm curious about the boxes made of dots, because that seems   
   to be new with Slackware 15.0, but that is not the subject of this post.   
      
   And here they are in Slackware64 15.0 using my new script:   
      
      NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS   
      sda      8:0    0 465.8G  0 disk   
      ├─sda1   8:1    0  21.4G  0 part   
      ├─sda2   8:2    0   953M  0 part   
      ├─sda3   8:3    0  11.2G  0 part   
      
   So what's going on?  I suspect that Slackware64 15.0 has something   
   different in it that caused my old script to have trouble.  It seems I   
   found a solution, but it is a little unsatisfying not understanding what   
   happened.   
      
   -Joe   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)