Re: weird \s

[Mike Bianchi]

> What do folks think?

I would add that where  \s[nnn]  is legal it would be the preferred syntax.

It is what I use all the time, even for  \s[9]  .  Unambiguous.


Witness in groff:
        .sp 8
        .ps 8
        \  .ps 8   \s10  10   \s40 40   \s(20 20   \s[40] 40   \s[120] 120

attachment:
        witness.png

                                                                Mike

On Tue, Mar 31, 2020 at 12:32:04PM +1100, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> At 2020-03-30T19:16:56-0400, Doug McIlroy wrote:
> > Does anyone else see the following behavior?
> > Version 1.22.4 handles \s correctly up to \s39, but
> > truncates a size of 40 or greater to its first
> > digit. Here are two screen shots, with ^D edited in
> > to show where input ends and output begins.
> 
> Hi Doug!
> 
> This appears to be for backward compatibility.  The 1992 revision of
> CSTR #54 says in �2.3:
> 
> "Note that through an accident of history, a construction like \s39 is
> parsed as size 39, and thus converted to size 36 (given the sizes
> above), while \s40 is parsed as size 4 followed by 0.  The syntax \s(nn
> and \s�(nn permits specification of sizes that would otherwise be
> ambiguous."
> 
> As Robert Thorsby noted, this is documented in the groff Texinfo manual;
> however, it is not noted in the groff(7) man page, something I'm
> inclined to fix in the near term.
> 
> To the broader group, I would furthermore suggest that, being GNU roff,
> it might behoove us to preserve the above "accident of history" only in
> compatibility mode, and have the \sn form accept only a single-digit
> argument for consistency with other escape forms.  Doug still would have
> gotten into trouble, but it would have been a more easily understood
> trouble.
> 
> What do folks think?
> 
> Regards,
> Branden

-- 
 Mike Bianchi
 Foveal Systems

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witness.png
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