Re: [groff] 02/04: Stop spelling "Unix" as "UNIX".

[Ingo Schwarze]

Hi Branden,

G. Branden Robinson wrote on Sun, Nov 11, 2018 at 06:44:10PM -0500:

> commit 2d7749c311ab5ace131c61ece776131e99f242c8
> Author: G. Branden Robinson <address@hidden>
> Date:   Sun Nov 11 17:29:25 2018 -0500
> 
>     Stop spelling "Unix" as "UNIX".
[...]
>       There are instances I did _not_ change; they may require further
>       review.
>               tmac/doc-syms-u:

The string "UNIX" appears in these macros:

.Ux
    I deprecated that one some time ago because it is useless.
    There is no need to invent macros for random words, it just
    bloats the language for no gain:
      https://man.openbsd.org/mdoc#Ux
    Given that the macro is only retained for compatibility with
    historical documents, it should probably stay as it is.

.At
    That macro is intended to print the official names of specific
    AT&T UNIX releases; substantial use will remain for good in
    HISTORY sections.  It think it should print the names in the
    capitalization that was used officially, so it should not be
    changed to "Unix".

.St -susv2 and -susv3
    Same thing, this should use the capitalization officially
    used by The Open Group:
      http://www.unix.org/what_is_unix/single_unix_specification.html
    So it should not be changed to "Unix".

>               tmac/doc-old.tmac-u:

That is Cynthia's "version 2" of the mdoc(7) macros, which became
obsolete when she made nowadays' "version 3" the default on March
7, 1991 (or even earlier - SCCS history doesn't reach back further
than that date for these files).  4.3BSD-Reno in June 1990 was the
only operating system release ever to use that version of the macros,
and only for few manual pages: most still used man(7) in 1990.  At
the time of the release before that, 4.3BSD-Tahoe in June 1988, no
version of mdoc(7) existed yet.

So if this file serves any purpose besides allowing the formatting
of less than 100 historical files that were all written by one
single person (Cynthia Livingston) in the single year 1990 (or
possibly a few already in 1989?), that purpose is documenting
history.  So if we keep the file, it should not be changed in any
way.

>               tmac/doc-common-u:

.Os ATT
    That is a historic way of saying "this manual page documents a
    program that came from AT&T UNIX".  Grepping the whole tree of
    all BSD releases ever (up to 4.4-Lite2), it only appears
    in 18 manual pages in 4.3BSD-Reno (but that is v2, see above)
    and in 20 manual pages in the initial release of 4.4BSD
    in June 1993.  But all instances were gone by the time
    of 4.4BSD-Lite1 in April 1994: all AT&T licensed code was
    purposefully being removed in that period to make BSD a free
    operating system.  So in released versions of this file, support
    for this macro argument was used for less than a year, and it
    has been obsolete for precisely 24 years.  It should probably
    stay as it is for compatibility with those twenty pages, and
    also for the same reason as .At.

>               tmac/groff_mdoc.7.man:

This file contains the string "UNIX" at three places to document
the .Ux macro, so the capitalization should remain as it is.

I think with respect to mdoc, you made the right decisions.

Yours,
  Ingo