Re: Proposed GNU troff behavior change: require end-of-input macros to exit

[G. Branden Robinson]

[self-follow-up]

Some clarifications, to our Texinfo manual and to my own remarks...

At 2023-12-08T15:34:28-0600, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
>      The '\c' in the above example needs explanation.  For historical
>      reasons (and for compatibility with AT&T 'troff'), the end macro
>      exits as soon as it causes a page break and no remaining data is
>      in the partially collected line.

Clearer would be:

"as soon as it causes a page break and no output line is pending."

>      To always force processing the whole end macro independently of
>      this behaviour it is thus advisable to insert something that starts
>      an empty partially filled line ('\c') whenever there is a chance
>      that a page break can happen.

"An empty partially filled line" is somewhat baffling wording.  Clearer
would be:

"to ensure that an output line is pending, even if it has no visible
content, whenever a page break might occur during end-of-input macro
processing."

> I would prefer to just make `em` behave the way people expect, but
> retain the weird old behavior for the benefit of historical documents.

...in AT&T compatibility mode ("groff -C") only.

Regards,
Branden

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