Re: Description of the naming conventions for variables, macros, etc in MS?

[T. Kurt Bond]

Thanks!

On Fri, Aug 7, 2020 at 3:29 AM G. Branden Robinson <
g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> wrote:

> At 2020-08-06T12:05:54-0400, T. Kurt Bond wrote:
> > Is there a description of the naming conventions used in the groff ms
> > macros for variables, macros, and so forth?  An * seems to mean
> > internal and ! seems to mean array, for instance.  What does @ mean?
>
> You can find this information in the "Naming Conventions" node of the ms
> chapter of our Texinfo manual.
>
> Here it is in text form.
>
> (N.B., this material is not in the ms version of the document Larry
> recently supplied; it will need to be backported.  I'll go over the
> Texinfo chapter carefully to bring ms.ms up to date before deleting the
> Texinfo chapter as described in my Grand Plan(tm)[1].)
>
> 4.6.8 Naming Conventions
> ------------------------
>
> The following conventions are used for names of macros, strings and
> number registers.  External names available to documents that use the
> 'groff -ms' macros contain only uppercase letters and digits.
>
>    Internally the macros are divided into modules; naming conventions
> are as follows:
>
>    * Names used only within one module are of the form MODULE'*'NAME.
>
>    * Names used outside the module in which they are defined are of the
>      form MODULE'@'NAME.
>
>    * Names associated with a particular environment are of the form
>      ENVIRONMENT':'NAME; these are used only within the 'par' module.
>
>    * NAME does not have a module prefix.
>
>    * Constructed names used to implement arrays are of the form
>      ARRAY'!'INDEX.
>
>    Thus the groff ms macros reserve the following names:
>
>    * Names containing the characters '*', '@', and ':'.
>
>    * Names containing only uppercase letters and digits.
>
> Regards,
> Branden
>
> [1] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff/2020-06/msg00044.html
>


-- 
T. Kurt Bond, tkurtbond@gmail.com, https://tkurtbond.github.io