Re: weird \s

[Mike Bianchi]

Bjarni,
        Nice, tight analysis and proposed solutions.  Thank you.
                                                        Mike Bianchi

On Thu, Apr 02, 2020 at 11:58:01PM +0000, Bjarni Ingi Gislason wrote:
 
snip
 
>   1) The missing part is information.
>   Solution:
>      a) Provide a message (warning, error), if "\snn" is in the input.
>      b) Augment the documentation to tell the readers,
>         that "\snn" is deprecated, obsolete, out of date, etc.
>         and what they should use instead.
> 
>   2) About the "\snn" problem.
>      The current executing code is not the problem.
>      The current existing roff-files are not the problem.
>   The problem is the people who (still, will) write "\snn"
>   instead of "\s(nn" (portability) or "\s[nn]" (for "groff" and
>   compatibles).
 
snip
 
>   3) Other things.
>   a) A missing part of messages is the name of the culprit,
>      in this case the s-escape (\s).
>   Solution: Provide the name ("\\s escape" is already used once in the
>             subroutine).
>   b) Adding details of the argument of the escape in messages is not
>      necessary.
>   c) Adding specific code to report specific syntax errors is not
>      necessary.
 
snip