[bug #60227] [ms]: footnote format FF not applied to symbolic footnotes

[G. Branden Robinson]

URL:
  <https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?60227>

                 Summary: [ms]: footnote format FF not applied to symbolic
footnotes
                 Project: GNU troff
            Submitted by: gbranden
            Submitted on: Sun 14 Mar 2021 02:37:07 AM UTC
                Category: Macro - ms
                Severity: 3 - Normal
              Item Group: Incorrect behaviour
                  Status: None
                 Privacy: Public
             Assigned to: None
             Open/Closed: Open
         Discussion Lock: Any
         Planned Release: None

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Details:

Our documentation suggests that the footnote format (FF register, a groff
extension) is applied to all footnotes, including "symbolic" ones (where the
user explicitly supplies the footnote marker), not just automatically numbered
ones, but this is not the case.

Specifically, symbolic footnotes are not indented as automatically numbered
ones are, and they should be.  (They look like format 2 when they should look
like format 0.)

Input:

$ cat footnote-markers.ms 
.LP
This is my\** paragraph*.
.
.FS
numeric footnote
.FE
.
.FS
* symbolic footnote
.FE


groff Git HEAD output:

$ ./build/test-groff -Tutf8 -ms footnote-markers.ms | sed '/^$/d'
This is my1 paragraph*.
───────────
  1 numeric footnote
* symbolic footnote


Here is Heirloom Doctools ms output.  Its behavior is divergent from groff's
but consistent with Berkeley ms as documented by Berkeley's version of the ms
paper <https://www.hactrn.net/ietf/rfcgen/textms.html> (once you use \**
automatic numbering, you're stuck with it--groff ms tries to be more
flexible).


$ ./bin/nroff -ms footnote-markers.ms | sed '/^$/d'
This is my[1] paragraph*.
_________________________
   [1] numeric footnote
   [1] * symbolic footnote
                       March 14, 2021


The bracketing of the footnote markers in nroff mode is a worthy feature and
one groff ms should adopt (IMO)--but also a subject for a different Savannah
ticket.




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