Re: [groff] Advice wanted on drawing a file tree with pic

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Branden,

> I'm trying to help out another project (quilt) with some
> non-portability in one of their man pages.  Right now they're
> embedding raw UTF-8 codepoints into text to use line-drawing
> characters to depict a file hierarchy.

https://manned.org/quilt.1#head7 shows

    work/
    ├── patches/
    │    ├── series         (list of patches to apply)
    │    ├── patch1.diff    (one particular patch)
    │    ├── patch2.diff
    │    └── ...
    ├── .pc/
    │    ├── .quilt_patches (content of QUILT_PATCHES)
    │    ├── .quilt_series  (content of QUILT_SERIES)
    │    ├── patch1.diff/   (copy of patched files)
    │    │    └── ...
    │    ├── patch2.diff/
    │    │    └── ...
    │    └── ...
    └── ...

Indentation alone would seem sufficient to expose the hierarchy,
but if they are intent on drawing lines.

> Therefore please critique the following PIC.

pic seems overkill.  It seems to me they need three strings defined that
render to the same width.

    VER  |    │

    TEE  |--  ├──

    ELL  '--  └──

A replacement shows it covers their tree.

    work/
    TEE patches/
    VER  TEE series         (list of patches to apply)
    VER  TEE patch1.diff    (one particular patch)
    VER  TEE patch2.diff
    VER  ELL ...
    TEE .pc/
    VER  TEE .quilt_patches (content of QUILT_PATCHES)
    VER  TEE .quilt_series  (content of QUILT_SERIES)
    VER  TEE patch1.diff/   (copy of patched files)
    VER  VER  ELL ...
    VER  TEE patch2.diff/
    VER  VER  ELL ...
    VER  ELL ...
    ELL ...

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