Re: [PATCH 4/9] man/clear.1: Migrate macro usage conventions.

[G. Branden Robinson]

Hi Thomas,

At 2023-10-01T20:08:05-0400, Thomas Dickey wrote:
> > > mandoc doesn't like this 
> > > 
> > > man/clear.1:52:2: ERROR: skipping end of block that is not open: ..
> > > man/clear.1:53:2: ERROR: skipping unknown macro: .\}
> > > man/clear.1:65:2: ERROR: skipping end of block that is not open: ..
> 
> I normally develop with oldstable, and check with Debian testing.
> Both have mandoc (different versions) producing the same error message.
> 
> ii  mandoc         1.14.5-1     amd64        BSD manpage compiler toolset
> 
> ii  mandoc         1.14.6-1+b1  amd64        BSD manpage compiler toolset
> 
> (resolving this is too late for this weekend, and I'm working to flush out
> what I have merged/amended this evening).

No worries, we'll get it sorted one way or the other.

I noticed a few things about the 20231001 snapshot.

1.  My patch to make adacurses6-config use (and conditionally define)
    EX/EE _did_ get merged.  Does mandoc(1) complain for you on that
    page as well?

    If so, I can prepare a patch to back it out if that seems like the
    best course.  But I'd still be pretty puzzled why your Debian
    1.14.6-1+b1 package is complaining about this and my 1.14.6-1 isn't.

    If not, then I reckon either (a) a glitch happened while applying my
    patches, and your working copy had got legitimately bad *roff syntax
    by accident, or (b) the fancy stuff I was doing angered mandoc(1)
    under these specific circumstances.  If (b) is the case, perhaps I
    can simply resequence definitions of things to look more like
    MKada_config.in, and thereby keep mandoc(1) happy.

2.  The examples in clear(1) probably won't suffer horribly anyway if
    filling isn't disabled and the font not switched to monospace.
    They're already very short (3 are 1 output line, one is 2); all are
    separated by vertical space below, and 2 of the 4 by vertical space
    above as well; and their line lengths are short, falling even within
    the 65n bounds of AT&T troff man(7).  We could hedge our bets by
    inserting a `.br` request after line 103 (in snapshot 20231001).
    Such a hedge is less practical for the large Ada example in
    MKada_config.in.

3.  The change to _use_ `EX`/`EE` in clear(1) is merged, just not the
    patch to _define_ these macros if the document thinks it's being
    prepared for a typesetter using a non-groff-compatible formatter.
    So results will still be correct and attractive on modern systems,
    including mandoc(1) 1.14.5 and .6.

Looking forward to hearing your feedback and preferences.

Regards,
Branden

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