Bug#1019257: vim: syntax highlight: roff, man: man highlighting could be improved with some roff rules

[Alejandro Colomar]

Package: vim
Version: 2:9.0.0242-1
Severity: wishlist
Tags: upstream
X-Debbugs-Cc: alx.manpages@gmail.com, groff@gnu.org

Hi,

man(7) pages with a filename as foo.man are interpreted by vim as
written in man(7).  However, if the filename is written as foo.7,
vim thinks they are written in roff(7).  That's not a big issue,
but it's not really correct: although manual pages written in pure
roff(7) will work with man(1), it's very rare to find such pages
in the wild.  Vim could be fixed to realize that .[0-9] files are
man(7) pages, and highlight them as such.

I realized that vim didn't consider those as true man(7) pages
when I wrote some pages with the *.man extension for some tests.
The highlighting is different, and in some ways inferior.

Vim highlights macros, embedded tbl(1), and comments, within the
manual pages when it thinks they are written in roff(7).  But when
it thinks they are written in man(7), it doesn't highlight any of
those things, and it's a bit more difficult to read.

Cheers,

Alex


-- Package-specific info:

--- real paths of main Vim binaries ---
/usr/bin/vi is /usr/bin/vim.basic
/usr/bin/vim is /usr/bin/vim.basic

-- System Information:
Debian Release: bookworm/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 5.18.0-4-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU threads; PREEMPT)
Kernel taint flags: TAINT_OOT_MODULE, TAINT_UNSIGNED_MODULE
Locale: LANG=C.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=C.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

Versions of packages vim depends on:
ii  libacl1      2.3.1-1
ii  libc6        2.34-7
ii  libgpm2      1.20.7-10
ii  libselinux1  3.4-1+b1
ii  libsodium23  1.0.18-1
ii  libtinfo6    6.3+20220423-2
ii  vim-common   2:9.0.0242-1
ii  vim-runtime  2:9.0.0242-1

vim recommends no packages.

Versions of packages vim suggests:
ii  universal-ctags [ctags]  5.9.20210829.0-1
pn  vim-doc                  <none>
pn  vim-scripts              <none>

-- no debconf information