Re: style: .MR

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi,

Humm wrote:
> > I think we should either use .MR without a number, or use .I/.B,
> > probably .I/.B, since there's no manual page reference going on.
> > From there, man(7) tradition seems to prescribe .B, and groff(1)
> > style seems to prescribe .I...
>
> I think -man tradition quite clearly prescribes the use of .I.  See,
> for example, v7’s printf(3S):
>
>       .I Printf
>       places output on the standard output stream
>       .IR stdout .

There's no doubt it's .I for references like this, not .B.
It may be that .I was rendered on some ASCII terminal as reverse video,
or bold if it was capable of that, but the source used .I.

And the reason is because it looks really awful on a typeset piece of
paper if every time a word occurs it's in bold when there's nothing
special to draw attention for any particular one.  It's like less(1) or
a browser showing all the matches for a search: handy when you're
searching, but after that it's Esc-U or Ctrl-F Esc to cancel the
highlighting so the text is readable.

-- 
Cheers, Ralph.