Re: Two trivial questions

[Peter Schaffter]

On Wed, Oct 27, 2021, Ralph Corderoy wrote:
> It's g-roff, just as ed(1) is e-d.  History and culture are important so
> it's worth persisting and educating gently in the background,
> e.g. groff(1) should start
> 
>     This document describes the groff program, pronounced ‘gee-roff’, ...

+1 It's the perfect solution.

> > Second question, maybe not so trivial.  Is it acceptable to use a
> > comma for decimal fractions that are arguments to requests and macros
> > (say .ps 12,5 instead of .ps 12.5) if a user's locale supports it?
> 
> No, because: troff's input is more code than data; and allowing it
> removes an option for future expansion.

This is what I assumed.  I asked because a document in Spanish I was
reviewing used comma-separated decimal values for the dimensions of
a pdf image.  The decimal was sufficiently small that I couldn't
discern visually whether it was being respected.  I expected groff
to barf if the input were invalid, but it didn't.

-- 
Peter Schaffter
https://www.schaffter.ca