Re: [Groff] Nesting font macros in man pages

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Branden,

>     .SM
>     .B IFS\^\c
>     )
>
> I think the intention here was to get back to the normal-size roman
> font after "IFS" without introducing a stretchable space (hence \c)
> but still leave some room between the small bold IFS and the closing
> parenthesis, hance the hair space \^.

Agreed.

> My question is, were the man macros intended to work this way?  Should
> we expect ")" to render in a small font, or full-size roman?

.SM affect the next input line as it uses an input trap, `.it'.  `\c'
doesn't make an input line continue to the next as far as input traps
are concerned;  groff has .itc for that.  So the .SM is over by the `)'.

groff's Postscript output seems to agree.

    /F0 10 /address@hidden SF
    /F1 9 /address@hidden SF
    (IFS) 72 84 moveto show
    F0(\)) .75 0 rmoveto show

I welcome being corrected.  :-)

-- 
Cheers, Ralph.
https://plus.google.com/+RalphCorderoy