Re: Using tbl(1) for structure definitions

[G. Branden Robinson]

Hi Alex,

At 2022-07-30T02:04:39+0200, Alejandro Colomar wrote:
> On 7/30/22 01:56, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> > It'll be good to have a look.
> 
> Oh, it's already in your mailbox, isn't it?

I think I just responded to it.  :)

> But reallistically, how many people will fix their TS in man.local?
> Are we asking Debian [old]stable to backport that fix?  :)

I think we must be talking about different things.  There is no need to
modify the groff 1.22.4 and earlier man(7) `TS` macro.  It will put a
blank line before all tables (except, if not continuously rendering, at
the tops of pages or anyplace else no-space mode is on).

And, in fact, I did not change the 1.22.4 `TS` macro in any way.  I
contrived an ersatz `.cp` register via a hack and implemented a
substitute `MR` macro so that groff Git HEAD man pages would render
without warnings.

What I thought you were asking me was whether this `TS` change (removing
the `sp` request) needed to roll out before you could safely use tbl(1)
to lay out synopses of structs in the Linux man-pages.  I say "no",
because at worst, rendering with groff 1.22.4 and earlier, you'll get a
spurious blank line like this:

struct foo {

    int bar;
}

...but not with groff Git HEAD, of course.  I was worried about ugly
overprinting scenarios like that documented in Savannah #49390.

Does this clear things up?

Regards,
Branden

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