Allow tabular output to be flattened #13029
Description
Description
I am pulling this issue description out of #12460 (comment)
I think we've previously heard that tabular output can be frustrating for text-to-voice screenreaders, especially if the table has a high cardinality. I believe this is because navigating the rows and associating a cell with the correct column can require moving the cursor around a lot, where a fully-sighted person could get the same information with a glance. This issue proposes a holistic solution for adjusting tabular output across gh.
gh pr list currently has the following output:
ID TITLE BRANCH CREATED AT
#12787 fix: `gh project item-edit` error wh... ManManavadaria:fix-12726/item-edit-... about 10 hours ago
#12785 -fox 0tn3d636729100h-ctrl:trunk about 22 hours ago
#12784 Fix dnf config-manager command for r... sourman:patch-1 about 23 hours ago
#12783 Add databaseId to assignees GraphQL ... srt32:fix-assignee-databaseid about 1 day ago
#12782 chore(deps): bump github.com/google/... dependabot/go_modules/github.com/go... about 1 day ago
And in the machine readable, tab separated form, (e.g. when piped to cat) it doesn't even have the headers:
12787 fix: `gh project item-edit` error when editing Draft Issue with only one (title/body) flag ManManavadaria:fix-12726/item-edit-draft-issue-partial-update OPEN 2026-02-26T11:22:51Z
12785 -fox 0tn3d636729100h-ctrl:trunk OPEN 2026-02-25T23:34:47Z
12784 Fix dnf config-manager command for repo addition sourman:patch-1 OPEN 2026-02-25T22:26:03Z
12783 Add databaseId to assignees GraphQL fragment srt32:fix-assignee-databaseid OPEN 2026-02-25T15:23:04Z
12782 chore(deps): bump github.com/google/go-containerregistry from 0.20.7 to 0.21.1 dependabot/go_modules/github.com/google/go-containerregistry-0.21.1 OPEN 2026-02-25T14:04:01Z
I propose an environment variable GH_FLATTEN_TABLES that would adjust this output to something like:
ROW: 1
ID: 12787
TITLE: fix: `gh project item-edit` error when editing Draft Issue with only one (title/body) flag
BRANCH: ManManavadaria:fix-12726/item-edit-draft-issue-partial-update
STATE: OPEN
CREATED AT: 2026-02-26T11:22:51Z
ROW: 2
ID: 12785
TITLE: -fox
BRANCH: 0tn3d636729100h-ctrl:trunk
STATE: OPEN
CREATED AT: 2026-02-25T23:34:47Z
ROW: 3
ID: 12784
TITLE: Fix dnf config-manager command for repo addition
BRANCH: sourman:patch-1
STATE: OPEN
CREATED AT: 2026-02-25T22:26:03Z
ROW: 4
ID: 12783
TITLE: Add databaseId to assignees GraphQL fragment
BRANCH: srt32:fix-assignee-databaseid
STATE: OPEN
CREATED AT: 2026-02-25T15:23:04Z
ROW: 5
ID: 12782
TITLE: chore(deps): bump github.com/google/go-containerregistry from 0.20.7 to 0.21.1
BRANCH: dependabot/go_modules/github.com/google/go-containerregistry-0.21.1
STATE: OPEN
CREATED AT: 2026-02-25T14:04:01Z