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Re: [Groff] bad QE in -ms
From: |
Larry Kollar |
Subject: |
Re: [Groff] bad QE in -ms |
Date: |
Sat, 30 Jan 2016 22:18:51 -0500 |
> Doug McIlroy <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> The -ms macro QE typically draws a misleading diagnostic, "unbalanced QE".
> This breaks old documents that expect QP-QE (quoted paragraph) to narrow
> the text and then restore it. The groff QE does not restore.
>
> In fact, QE is aliased to RE, which means it will cause other trouble
> for a quoted paragraphs inside an RS-RE relative indent.
>
> I guess the rationale for deviating from previous practice was to make
> quoted paragraphs like other kinds of paragraph, which don't have end
> macros.
That’s the way I’d always thought it worked. QP sets a block quoted paragraph,
and the next LP or PP resets the margins to default.
Perhaps it would be better to:
.als QE nop
So it’s silently ignored.
— Larry