Re: [Groff] Nesting font macros in man pages

[Bjarni Ingi Gislason]

On Mon, Apr 24, 2017 at 11:41:22AM -0400, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> At 2017-04-24T16:22:37+0100, Ralph Corderoy wrote:
> > .SM affect the next input line as it uses an input trap, `.it'.  `\c'
> > doesn't make an input line continue to the next as far as input traps
> > are concerned;  groff has .itc for that.  So the .SM is over by the `)'.
> 
> That's exactly the hack I wanted to make to the TP macro.  I want to
> change its .it to an itc, thus:
> 

  I have made a similar suggestion, see bug number #42907 (or look for
'itc').

[...]
> 
> .TP
> .B \-scale \c
> .IR xfac [, yfac ]
> Multiply the horizontal and vertical window size by
> .I xfac
> and
> .IR yfac ,
> respectively.
> 

  One can use the transparent line indicator (\!) to use macros in a label,
without changing the '.TP' macro:

.TH testman 1 2017-04-DD
.TP
\!.B \-scale \c 
.IR xfac [, yfac ]
Multiply the horizontal and vertical window size by

  or a little different output (with a necessary longer indent):

.TH testman 1 2017-04-DD
.TP 20n
\!.B \-scale \c
\!.IR xfac [\c
\!.B ,\c
.IR yfac ]
Multiply the horizontal and vertical window size by


  The difference in output (compared to a '.TP' with escapes in the label)
is a small increase in the horizontal space caused by the used italic
correction in the macro '.IR'.

-- 
Bjarni I. Gislason