OOPS - Re: [Groff] new groff_differences.man

[Clarke Echols]

Oops -- I erred a bit.  Let me clarify:

Clarke Echols wrote:

> When I had to fight the problem (Starbase graphics library function
> names had atrocious man page filenames for a 14-character limit --
> some had identical names until the 16th or 18th character!), we had to
> get creative at times and abbreviate portions of the name starting at
> or near the beginning until we reached the requisite 14-character maximum.

We tried to use a direct truncation where we could so that a person
who knew the function name could type the name after the "man" command
name.  The system then took the first 11 or fewer characters and matched
that against the manual-page filename prior to the "dot".  The last two
characters were reserved for the suffix (1, 1m, 5, 3m, 3c, 3x, etc.).
How the filename gets used is dictated *entirely* by the utility or
library accessing the file.  The basic OS doesn't care, but the software
that processes the name, such as the man command, definitely might care.