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Re: [Groff] mdoc(7) interpretation differences (maybe groff bug)


From: Ingo Schwarze
Subject: Re: [Groff] mdoc(7) interpretation differences (maybe groff bug)
Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2014 23:33:37 +0100
User-agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15)

Hi Steffen,

Steffen Nurpmeso wrote on Mon, Nov 10, 2014 at 03:21:36PM +0100:

> Ok, but i really wonder now -- why?  If it is normal that .Va and
> other requests extend until the next macro switches the current
> mode (the mdoc macros seem to transport significant amount of
> state from a shallow view), regardless of punctuation, then why
> should .Fn be any different?

The difference is that for macros like .Ar, .Fl, .Ic, .Va,
each argument has the same semantics, so ".Ar foo bar" is
the same as ".Ar foo Ar bar", which makes reopening the scope
after punctuation vary natural.  On the other hand, .Fn has
positional arguments and ".Fn foo bar" is very different
from ".Fn foo Fn bar", so the effect observed when mandoc(1)
reopens the scope may seem suprising to some users.

> I thought and think that for conformity it would make more sense
> to fix .Fn than to change .Ic, .Va and all the others.

We are certainly not going to change the behaviour of .Ic, .Va
and the like, lots of existing manuals depend on that.

There are many macros *not* reopening scope after punctuation,
for example block macros like .Bl, .It, .Sh, .Op, .Oo, so it
wouldn't be *that* odd for .Fn to be different, even though
many in-line macros do reopen scope.

> I have no idea, but for mdocmx

What is mdocmx?

> it is the time to dig into the macros anyway,
> and i'll have a look into this while doing so.

Sure, making a good decision requires some more research,
which i'm not doing right now.

Yours,
  Ingo



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