Re: Represent several consecutive newlines

[Alejandro Colomar]

Hi!

On 5/9/22 18:27, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> Hi, Alex!
>
> At 2022-05-09T17:44:01+0200, Alejandro Colomar wrote:
> > Is it possible to represent the following precisely in a manual page?:
>
> Yes.
>
> > It's the output of a program that I'd like to represent precisely in
> > EXAMPLES, but groff(1) doesn't like things like:
> >
> > [[
> > .EX
> > .RB $ " echo -e \"\n\nHere's some text.\n\n\nAnd here's some more.\""
> >
> >
> > Here's some text.
> >
> >
> > And here's some more.
> > .EE
> > ]]
>
> Right.  You'll get warnings about the blank lines if the CHECKSTYLE
> register is set to 3 or more.
>
> Once again the non-printing input break comes to the rescue.  Here's how
> I'd do it.

:-)

> [[
> .TH foo 1 2022-05-09 "groff test suite"
> .P
> Here is an example.
> .RS
> .P
> .EX
> $ \c
> .B printf \[dq]\[rs]n\[rs]nfoo\[rs]n\[rs]n\[rs]n\[rs]n\[rs]nbar\[rs]n\[dq]
> \&
> \&
> foo
> \&
> \&
> \&
> bar
> .EE
> .RE
> .P
> That was an example.
> ]]

Very interesting.

> There are of course many other ways to achieve the same goal, if one
> strays beyond the portability advice offered in groff_man(7) (to be
> found in groff_man_style(7) in groff 1.23).

BTW, I just downloaded groff.git into my current computer, so it's 
likely that I'll try to review the new groff_man*(7) manual pages soon 
(and possibly others).

> In a *roff document that was not a manual page, I'd use the 'sp' request
> or a macro package's wrapper for it, if one were present.

Just out of curiosity: why?

Thanks!
Alex

--
Alejandro Colomar
Linux man-pages comaintainer; https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/
http://www.alejandro-colomar.es/