This is my face that I need a simple pagination program for Unix (show a page, pause, hit CR to show the next page) that is Unicode and emoji aware, so that it knows how long lines with them are. AFAIK less can't be used for this when I don't want it to ever clear the screen, just to keep printing the next page for however long.
(... because you have to know how long lines of text are so that you know when you've printed a full page.)
@ch2500 More appears to normally clear the screen and overwrite it for successive pages. I've probably been unclear; what I want is basically 'cat but pauses every page'.
(I have exactly this in a non-Unicode, non-emoji aware form and as a result it does sad things to text with emoji.)
Any pager that uses termcap/terminfo and does so properly will enter/exit 'cursor addressing mode', which will normally end up switching to and from the XTerm alternate screen, which isn't what you want.
AFAIAA not even the #Illumos pg is as dumb as you want. That uses terminfo, too.
You'd have to resurrect something from 1977 or so.
Or see how far forcing TERM=dumb gets you.
Or port Microsoft's MORE command. (-:
Chris Siebenmann
ch2500
JdeBP