Re: weird \s

[John Gardner]

I agree with Tadziu. Along with .cc and .c2, the .ec request opens up a
world of creative (ab)uses that reward clever thinking.

On Sat, 4 Apr 2020 at 03:25, Tadziu Hoffmann <address@hidden>
wrote:

>
> > In that light, inventing .ec was a terrible language design
> > mistake that should never have been permitted.  It was also
> > absolutely useless, which i have proven by implementing logic
> > in the mandoc pre-parser that eliminates .ec before even
> > starting the main parse sequence.  So all that can be done
> > with .ec can trivially be done without it as well.
>
> Here I must disagree.  I found .ec very helpful in implementing
> floats, where escapes must be evaluated during (delayed) rendering,
> and not when the content is originally read.  The idea here is to
> allow escapes to be used identically in floats and normal running
> text, without forcing the user to explicitly escape all escapes
> in floats.  (I think this is particularly useful when eqn-processed
> material is used in floats, where the user has no real control
> over the escapes.)
>
> I have no idea how I could have managed without using .ec to
> deactivate escapes in the float, while still having the escape
> mechanism functional for use by the macro itself.
>
>
>
>