Re: [Groff] extended font macro

[Clarke Echols]

On 01/26/2013 04:23 PM, Tadziu Hoffmann wrote:
> > Groff does have established syntax for that, namely \fItext1
> > \fRtext2 \fItext3 \fRtext4.  [...] it is how roff syntax looks
> > like: this century is not the right time to change basic roff
> > syntax.
>
> I disagree.  While this is legal, it is not "established".
> In fact, the recommended way to change fonts in manpages
> is to use the R, I, B, RI, BI, etc. macros.
>
> > Besides, i see no point in making low-level operations look
> > nice syntactically.
>
> There's more to it than just making the syntax look nice.
> These macros can also make the output look nice by
> automatically adding things like italic correction,
> without requiring the writer to worry about this.

I fully agree with Tadziu.  I was responsible for HP's manpages
and manpage policies for several years in the late 1980s and early
1990s.  I needed Courier font, and it was easy to add BC, IC, CI,
CB, CR, and RC etc. as needed.  I also completely overhauled the
typography and internal *roff file formatting to make it a lot
more consistent regarding usage and style.

If you're good at manpages, those macros are a whole lot easier to
read and understand than to engage in elaborate font macros.  Keep
it simple.

I used a shell script, vi run non-interactively from a shell script
(redirect keyboard commands from a file where the last line in the
file is ZZ), and in the middle of the vi script, I sent the buffer
to sed (-f option to take commands from another file), then brought
the sed output back in to replace the previous buffer contents.

I was able to eliminate nearly all \f* in-line coding, and the
result was beautiful manpages with beautiful coding that used ONLY
man macros all the way through.

Time to overhaul over 1000 manpage files?  Four hours to write the
scripts, and about 15 minutes to do the job...

On a processor running at 30 Mhz, not 3.3 Ghz!  And I think the
two system disk drives were 45 Mbytes each (January 1989).

 The old American saying is: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Clarke