[bug #66187] [troff] permit control over flushing of output file state

[Deri James]

Follow-up Comment #2, bug #66187 (group groff):

You may remember a detailed breakdown I gave you, a few years ago, on the
differences between .device and .output (\!). The main difference is shown by
this:-

Here is some text
.device Mark here
Marked
.device To here
.output Where does this go?
Ending with this.

Run with -Z and notice that .device follows the text flow, so I can bracket
the word Marked" with device controls, whereas .output does what it says on
the tin (Emit string directly to the gtroff intermediate output (subject to
copy mode interpre-
tation)). Any text being built up on the current line is not flushed so the
.output string appears before partial line is flushed.

This is why the markstart/markend instructions use .device. Both methods are
useful in different situations, but with suitable control of the various
flushing methods it should be possible to retain the current behaviour just
using .device. I do have a slight worry in that I know to you this is
incorrect behaviour, but to everyone else who has relied on this behaviour, it
is a feature change. We can easily change our macros to avoid a regression,
but we have given no warning of this big change in behaviour, so people may
find their macros are no longer working the same.


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