Output shifting during horizontal scroll

[KaKi87]

Hello,

When horizontal scroll is enabled with --wrap=never, on a file that doesn't need vertical scroll, bat starts outputting the file below the currently used height, despite emptying that area, then when horizontally scrolling, shifts the file to the top :

How to make it directly output the file from the top so that there is no shifting when horizontally scrolling ?

Thanks

[keith-hall]

I guess you'd need to ask the developers of the pager you are using - presumably less?

[KaKi87]

What do you mean ?

[keith-hall]

bat passes it's output to a program called a pager. It's the pager which is responsible for the weird initial offset/scrolling effect you see. This pager is typically an executable called less.

I would be interested to know if you get the same behavior with running less on the file directly: less -S lorem_ipsum.txt (or perhaps write the bat output to a file and run less on that, so it includes the "decorations")

[KaKi87]

I confirm that less -S lorem_ipsum.txt produces the same behavior.

Your wording seem to indicate that the pager can be changed, is that correct, and if yes, how ?

Thanks

[keith-hall]

https://github.com/sharkdp/bat?tab=readme-ov-file#using-a-different-pager

[KaKi87]

Alright, which value will fix the behavior I reported ?

Thanks

[keith-hall]

I unfortunately can't help with that because I have no idea. But I suggest to download and try some modern pagers written in Rust or Golang, see what suits you best 🙂

[KaKi87]

Hi,

I asked on r/LinuxQuestions and got an answer : when using less -Sc lorem_ipsum.txt, the behavior doesn't occur.

Therefore, I'd like to suggest adding the c parameter to less when running bat --wrap=never.

Thanks