Re: [Groff] The case against the case against .EX/.EE & .DS/.DE

[Gunnar Ritter]

Werner LEMBERG <address@hidden> wrote:

> I tend to advocate the use of .DS/.DE, .TQ, .EX/.EE, .SY, .OP, and
> probably other nifty things to be used within man pages, *together*
> with its macro definitions in the preamble.  This gives us both a
> decent markup and backwards compatibility.

This is certainly an acceptable path, provided that the new
macros are offered in a public domain implementation so that
everybody can use them without worrying about the license.

Still, if you want macros for the synopsis, there is something
missing yet. Code like

| .OP \-W name
| .RI "[\ " files\|.\|.\|. "\ ]"

mixes structural and visual markup in a questionable way (the
second line makes assumptions about how the output of .OP looks).

POSIX (available for free from <http://www.unix.org>) has a set
of prescriptions for synopsis formatting within the standard
(Base Definitions, 12.1 "Utility Argument Syntax"). It clearly
has its origins in manual page synopsis practice, so looking
at it might be helpful for defining synopsis macros.

        Gunnar