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Re: [Groff] First round of cleabnup patches


From: Eric S. Raymond
Subject: Re: [Groff] First round of cleabnup patches
Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2007 21:25:44 -0500
User-agent: Mutt/1.4.2.2i

Werner LEMBERG <address@hidden>:
> > This is my first set of cleanup patches for the groff man pages.
> 
> Thanks!  I'm now going to add this slowly to the CVS.

Let me know when you're done, as it won't really be fe for me to do
more cleanup until things are in a stable state.

> > All new macros defined in these changes have two-character names,
> 
> Hmm.  Not quite correct -- see .URL and .MTO.

Those aren't new, they're transplanted from www.tmac.

>                           As written in another
> mail, it's fine for to use the .UR/.UE pair, dropping .MTO since it
> can be expressed with .UR.  Objections?

None from me.  doclifter already lifts .UR/.UE; I found them on some
version of the man macro page I can't now lay hands on.

> > I have not embedded an inclusion of an-ext.tmac in an-old.tmac
> > because the file contains some policy -- see the font remappings
> > near the front.
> 
> Where's the problem?

These bits:

.if n \{\
.  ftr CR R
.  ftr CI I
.  ftr CB B
.\}
.
.if '\(.T'dvi' \{\
.  ftr CB CW
.\}
.

> > Somebody with better macro-coding skills than I have should upgrade
> > .EX to take an optional relative-indent argument.
> 
> Some comments.
> 
>   (1) We could say
> 
>         .RS n
>         .EX
>         ...
>         .EE
>         .RE
> 
>       instead of providing an optional argument.
>
>   (2) .EX could have the same value as .TP for the default
>       indentation.  Similar to .TP, all following invocations of .EX
>       could use the same indentation as the last .EX with an argument
>       (or the default value if there hasn't been a call to .EX with an
>       argument earlier).
>
>   (3) Same as (2), but 0 as the default indentation value.

Any of these approaches would be OK with me.
 
> For this reason, I prefer (1) for both .EX/.EE and .DS/.DE -- since
> there aren't any other paired `environments' in man except .RS/.RE, we
> would even have a consistent interface if we refrained from having an
> optional parameter for indentation.

OK.

> > .EX/.EE needs to be documented in groff_man(7).
> 
> Actually, *all* macros added to an-ext.tmac have to be documented.
> Since macros in an-ext overwrite any platform-specific versions of
> .EX/.EE we don't have to bother with different implementations.

I'm now a bit puzzled about why an-old and an-ext have separate existences
at all.  If we're going to dicument the an-ext things and treat them as
first-class citizens, why have two files?
-- 
                <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a>




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