Re: (off topic?) Docbook? Re: manlint?

[Ingo Schwarze]

Hi Branden,

G. Branden Robinson wrote on Tue, Sep 29, 2020 at 07:20:46PM +1000:
> At 2020-09-27T18:30:41-0400, James K. Lowden wrote:

>> Any suggestions on how -ms macros could be compatibly extended to
>> include classes and IDs?  I've always found that aspect of my
>> "proposal" daunting.  

> Well, why not have strings MS-CLASS and MS-ID?  The user can set them
> with .ds any time they want.  The macro implementations can them
> implement them as part of devtags embedded in any \X escapes.
> 
> I never did get very good at CSS but I think I got the basic concept
> down; anything interpreting the devtag input can already use the tag
> type (macro name), like "SH", as a top-level selector, so it's not like
> the user would even need to be highly disciplined about re-setting the
> registers.
> 
> This seems so simple and obvious to me that there has to be something
> deeply wrong with it.

Quite to the contrary, there is nothing wrong with the idea.

Actually, it is very similar to what i implemented in mdoc(7) in January.

Well, i used a macro (.Tg) while you suggest using .ds, but it is
blatantly obvious both are equivalent solutions: a macro can set
a string - and if a string is defined, the program can trigger an
action that could as well have been triggered by a macro.

Also, your .ds solution has exactly the same crucial property that
my .Tg solution was designed for: it does not derail formatters not
supporting it.

> Examples:
> 
>   .ds MS-CLASS appendix\"
>   .SH
>   Frobnitz Internals

Sure, in very rare cases, such explicit tagging may be helpful,
but in most cases, it will be redundant and something like this
will be sufficient:

  .SH APPENDICES
  .SS Frobnitz Internals

>   .ds MS-ID obtaining-frobnitz\"
>   .PP
>   You can download Frobnitz from the Free Software Foundation at...

Same thing, in practice, this will usually be more like:

  .SS Obtaining Frobnitz
  You can download Frobnitz from the Free Software Foundation at...

Right, not always, but in most cases...

Yours,
  Ingo