Re: man(7) .TH font change, was: groff man(7) `B` macro...

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Ingo,

> The price to pay for this very small benefit of .MR is that pages
> using the new feature will become broken in a very bad way for all
> output modes on formatters not yet supporting it.

Plan 9 could add .MR because they also controlled all the man pages
within the Plan 9 OS.  Groff doesn't have that luxury so it's just
creating yet more confusion and the need to make the extra
recommendation to avoid .MR.

> But i don't think changing the font in the header line has anything to
> do with the question whether introducing .MR is a good idea

Agreed.  It would be interesting to know why Branden thought it should
change.  Was it the aesthetic, or for consistency with the italic
rendering by .MR of ‘foo(1)’?

> The header line does not contain a cross reference, so there is no
> justification for marking it up in the same way as a cross reference.

Agreed.

> we are talking about a header line in the page margin.  This is *not*
> something that should be emphasized by using italic or bold font.

Extra emphasis for foo(1) in the header line isn't required.  The layout
provides the header line as an easy visual reference point, e.g. when
flicking through lots of pages.  And a font providing easy reading is
desired.

-- 
Cheers, Ralph.