Re: [Groff] problem with `refer'

[Jon Snader]

On Wed, Jan 30, 2002 at 11:36:11PM +0100, Werner LEMBERG wrote:
> 
> `refer' has the following very ugly, ill-designed feature:
> 
>   `.[' <pre>
>   `.]' <post>
> 

[snip]

> 
> I plan to change this.
> 

[snip]

> What do you think?  The old behaviour will of course be retained
> within the compatibility mode.  I wonder whether I shall add a new
> argument to groff which explicitly activates refer's compatibility
> mode -- IMHO it's not worth the trouble.  I doubt that there are a lot
> of documents which use this feature (overriding the used macro
> package's formatting).
> 

I don't think compatibility mode alone is correct.  The trouble is that
many of us using groff and refer do use some (or even many) of the groff
extensions.  To retroactively change refer's behavior from what is has
always been in groff (not troff) breaks any documents that depend on the
current behavior.  Compatibility mode doesn't help if any of the extensions
are used.

I feel *very* strongly that if you do this you should have to *explicitly*
activate the *new* (not old) behavior.  That way documents written to the
current groff still work and those who want the new behavior can get it.
Anything else certainly violates the principle of least surprise, and is
sure to annoy those of us depending on the current groff behavior.  For
example, I would certainly be annoyed if a new printing of my book escaped
to the printers with broken references because refer behavior changed and
mangled a reference far away from anything that I changed in the manuscript.

Jon Snader