Re: [Groff] Nesting font macros in man pages

[Ingo Schwarze]

Hi,

Steffen Nurpmeso wrote on Thu, Apr 27, 2017 at 02:21:10PM +0200:

> You have a notion of "callable" and "parsed", and you should be
> aware of that or you introduce errors which are hard to find.

Wrong.  Just assume everything is callable.  Actually, mandoc
warns if you use the name of a macro that is not callable on
a macro line witout escaping it:

address@hidden $ mandoc -mdoc -Tlint 
.Sy Sh
mandoc: <stdin>:1:5: WARNING: macro neither callable nor escaped: Sh

And by the way, so does groff:

address@hidden $ nroff -mdoc      
.Sy Sh
mdoc warning: Using a macro as first argument cancels effect of .Sy (#1)
Usage: .Sh not callable by other macros (#1)


Besides, most macros are parsed and callable nowadays (thanks to
the work done by the groff team, in particular Werner).  So that
distinction did complicate things in the remote past, but it no
longer does for quite some time now.

I'm not going to correct all errors in what you might say in the
future, to save time and avoid noise.

> [...]

Yours,
  Ingo