Re: [Groff] nop request

[Werner LEMBERG]

> OK, I've no objection to ecs and ecr being added.  Although, it seems
> that they are necessary only because
> 

>     .eo and .ec are being used around definitions.  If your mind is
>     used to the double and quadruple backslashes then it makes
>     reading macros written in this manner most hard; your brain
>     keeps saying `there's a mistake!'.  Troff code looking like
>     traditional troff code is an important consideration if others
>     are to easily read and comprehend it.

Do you really believe what you've just written? :-) Nobody is forced
to use it.

BTW, I'll soon commit a new version of tmac.doc which is *readable*
for normal people :-)

Compare this

.de bU  
.nr oM \\n(oM+1
.ds b1 \&\\*(sY\&\(bu\fP
.uL
..

to this:

.eo
.
.de doc-bullet-list
.  nr doc-nesting-level +1
.  ds doc-out-string \&\*[doc-Sy-font]\&\[bu]\f[P]
.  doc-do-list
..
.
.ec

>     The convention that \ is the escape character, at least when
>     invoking `external' macros, is being weakened.

Not at all!  Note that suppressing the escape character is only a
facility to make the source files more readable.  Similar to TeX, a
lot of things break if you don't use the backslash as the escape
character.

For TeX, I use a comparable trick to avoid the error-prone `%' at the
end of a line to suppress the insertion of whitespace:

Compare this:

  \def\test{%
    \texttt{a}%
    \texttt{b}%
  }

to this:

  \endlinechar -1

  \def\test{
    \texttt{a}
    \texttt{b}
  }

  \endlinechar `\^^M


    Werner