Re: .bp not working in groff 1.23.0 when it worked fine in 1.22.4

[Dave Kemper]

On 1/23/24, G. Branden Robinson <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> wrote:
> At 2024-01-23T20:52:34-0600, Dave Kemper wrote:
>> However, .bp arguably shouldn't have been affected by the change,
>> since it probably wasn't subject to the same historical ambiguity.
>
> I agree, and I wasn't happy about it.

I wonder if the proper way to address this lies in core groff.

Having no-space mode suppress .bp seems quirky, and at odds with the
info manual's stated use case for the mode: "A paragraphing macro
might ordinarily insert vertical space to separate paragraphs.  A
section heading macro could invoke 'ns' to suppress this spacing for
the first paragraph in a section."  (CSTR #54, befitting its terser
nature, suggests no usage for .ns.)  But of course this behavior
cannot be overturned unilaterally.

However, .ns currently takes no arguments -- but it could, a value to
specify "suppress only vertical space, but not page breaks."  The
behavior with no argument would be unchanged, so historical usage
would work as it always has.

There are probably down sides to this I haven't thought of.