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Re: [Groff] Nesting font macros in man pages


From: Ralph Corderoy
Subject: Re: [Groff] Nesting font macros in man pages
Date: Sat, 29 Apr 2017 15:55:11 +0100

Hi Branden,

> > The troff system was designed to be typed at a keyboard.  The
> > dot-on-the-left rule might be ugly, and the requests/macros terse,
> > but the benefit to the user is relatively few keystrokes above those
> > needed for the text.
...
> Nothing has come close to saving me more keystrokes than <TAB> at the
> shell prompt and CTRL-N in Vim.

Completion is useful, but `.bp' and `.B<tab>' don't have equivalent cost
even if the latter completes to `.BreakPage'.  `.bp' can be just be
typed whereas completion is an interaction that interrupts the writer.
Has tab proffered the correct expansion?  No, should I tab again, feed
it another character, or move the cursor down two in the list of
alternatives?  Once the interaction is finished, the writer tries to
resume his train of thought.

There's also a cost to the reader as `.bp' is less noisy than
`.BreakPage'.

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



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