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Re: [groff] Regularize (sub)section cross references.
From: |
Ingo Schwarze |
Subject: |
Re: [groff] Regularize (sub)section cross references. |
Date: |
Sun, 16 Dec 2018 20:49:05 +0100 |
User-agent: |
Mutt/1.8.0 (2017-02-23) |
Hi Tadziu,
Tadziu Hoffmann wrote on Sun, Dec 16, 2018 at 07:08:06PM +0100:
> Ingo Schwarze wrote:
>> Jerry Saltzer's RUNOFF (1964) did not have a .tr request, [...]
>> By AT&T Version 3 UNIX (1973), nroff(1) did have it, [...]
> Doug McIlroy's GECOS runoff had it
Interesting.
Oh yes, now that you point me to it,
i see it in the source code.
> (the memo from 1969
> even mentions its utility in creating unpaddable spaces),
> so I assumed (perhaps wrongly) that this feature had also
> been adopted in Unix nroff from the beginning.
That does seem likely, then.
>> so it's not clear to me whether unix v1 roff(1) already
>> supported the .tr request. But even if it did, that
>> would not have helped: programmable macros only appeared
>> in nroff(1), in 1972, at least a year after the v1 manual
>> pages were completed - let alone begun.
> I see. So while the v3 nroff manual page already mentions
> macros (and the .tr request), the manual page itself was
> still written using raw nroff requests. For v4 the manpages
> *were* rewritten to use macros (so it's not like editing all
> the manpages was considered too much work at the time),
Major formatting changes occurred at least three times:
* AT&T Version 4 Unix: use of the first macro sets:
man0/naa (74 lines) and man0/taa (91 lines).
* AT&T Version 7 Unix: use of the new man(7) macros (267 lines)
* 4.4BSD: use of the new mdoc(7) macros (4620 lines)
Approximate numbers of manual pages:
* AT&T Version 3 Unix (1973): 220 13k lines 53k words 305kB
* AT&T Version 4 Unix (1973): 262
* AT&T Version 6 Unix (1975): 253
* AT&T Version 7 Unix (1979): 301
* 3BSD (1980): 401
* 4.0BSD: (1980): 438
* 4.1BSD: (1981): 439
* 4.2BSD: (1983): 688
* 4.3BSD-Tahoe: (1988): 966
* 4.3BSD-Reno: (1990): 1220 175k lines 840k words 5200kB
* 4.4BSD: (1993): 1461
* 4.4BSD-Lite1: (1994): 1178
* 4.4BSD-Lite2: (1995): 1199
* OpenBSD-current: (2018): 3387 850k lines 4400k words 27MB
(base only, without X and ports)
So it is hundred times the volume now compared to v4,
or five times the volume that Cynthia had to handle when
she did her rewrite. And i doubt that OpenBSD is the largest
system out there.
Of course, in the case at hand, we are only talking about the .Sh/.SH
lines; still, a quick grep gives me 23k of those in the OpenBSD
base system alone - more than the complete text of the v4 manuals.
Some of that can certainly be automated, but it still needs
proofreading, and the automation is not completely trivial.
> but auto-capitalization for section headers was not considered --
> or perhaps it was considered but consciously rejected because
> situations existed where it would be detrimental?
Doug or Ken may know that; i don't.
Yours,
Ingo
- Re: [groff] Regularize (sub)section cross references., Ingo Schwarze, 2018/12/14
- Re: [groff] Regularize (sub)section cross references., John Gardner, 2018/12/14
- Re: [groff] Regularize (sub)section cross references., Tadziu Hoffmann, 2018/12/16
- Re: [groff] Regularize (sub)section cross references., Ingo Schwarze, 2018/12/16
- Re: [groff] Regularize (sub)section cross references., Tadziu Hoffmann, 2018/12/16
- Re: [groff] Regularize (sub)section cross references.,
Ingo Schwarze <=
- Re: [groff] Regularize (sub)section cross references., John Gardner, 2018/12/16
- Re: [groff] Regularize (sub)section cross references., Ingo Schwarze, 2018/12/16
- Re: [groff] Regularize (sub)section cross references., John Gardner, 2018/12/16
- Re: [groff] Regularize (sub)section cross references., G. Branden Robinson, 2018/12/16
- Re: [groff] Regularize (sub)section cross references., John Gardner, 2018/12/16
- Re: [groff] Regularize (sub)section cross references., Tadziu Hoffmann, 2018/12/16
- Re: [groff] Regularize (sub)section cross references., John Gardner, 2018/12/16
- Re: [groff] Regularize (sub)section cross references., G. Branden Robinson, 2018/12/16
- Re: [groff] Regularize (sub)section cross references., Ingo Schwarze, 2018/12/16
- Re: [groff] Regularize (sub)section cross references., Tadziu Hoffmann, 2018/12/16