Re: [Groff] What does .\" NS mean in the unstripped tmac files?

[John Gardner]

Excellent sleuth work, Ralph! (As always) Thanks!

However, I was more curious about what it was an abbreviation for,
believing it was "recently" added (with "recent addition" meaning anything
added to Groff's codebase within the last 10 years).

Given Roff's longevity, it becomes easy to forget how old Groff is too
(well, to a 30-year old...)


On 26 February 2017 at 01:14, Ralph Corderoy <address@hidden> wrote:

> Hi John,
>
> Werner wrote:
> > > .\" NS Dd user macro (not parsed, not callable)
> >
> > I no longer know, sorry.  It marks documentation lines, that's for
> > sure.
>
> They appeared in a48ab7b6db26b1d98f77f59f22896fe02a700c40,
>
>     Author: James Clark <address@hidden>
>     Date:   Wed Mar 18 04:29:18 1992 -0500
>
>         groff before CVS: release 1.05
>
> and part of CHANGES there says
>
>     The -mdoc macros have been upgraded to the version in the second
>     Berkeley networking release.  This version is not completely
>     compatible with earlier versions; the old version is still available
>     as -mdoc.old.
>
> So you may find a hint in an old BSD that can code to process them.
>
> Cheers, Ralph.
>
>