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[68.12.97.90]) by smtp.gmail.com with ESMTPSA id x6-20020a056870740600b001ea4324364csm3085681oam.12.2023.10.26.08.28.15 (version=TLS1_3 cipher=TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 bits=256/256); Thu, 26 Oct 2023 08:28:15 -0700 (PDT) Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2023 10:28:13 -0500 From: "G. Branden Robinson" To: Alejandro Colomar Cc: linux-man@vger.kernel.org, groff@gnu.org Subject: Re: Why does man(7) have 3 paragraph macros for the same thing? (was: `\c`, mdoc(7), and man(7) extension macros) Message-ID: <20231026152813.6jziefb3umfmshb4@illithid> References: <20231025185424.txreg7q47zigo24j@illithid> <20231026125835.phpfjhz6xbsde33d@illithid> <20231026145140.qyl4lsfhp3644hmh@illithid> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha256; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="n5mpo2te5njim5qx" Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: Precedence: bulk List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-man@vger.kernel.org --n5mpo2te5njim5qx Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable At 2023-10-26T16:58:13+0200, Alejandro Colomar wrote: > On Thu, Oct 26, 2023 at 09:51:40AM -0500, G. Branden Robinson wrote: > > At 2023-10-26T16:12:36+0200, Alejandro Colomar wrote: > > > Regarding PP, LP, and P, what's the history of them? Why do we > > > have the 3? I'm willing to reduce them to just one. > >=20 > > I invite Doug McIlroy to go on record, but my surmise is that they > > were introduced as crutches for people already familiar with ms(7). > >=20 > > Doug's original man(7) (1979) didn't have `P`. But Unix System III > > added it in 1980, and 4.3BSD followed suit in 1986. This > > information is in groff_man(7). >=20 > Was the original PP? It had both `PP` and `LP`. I reckon Doug figured ms(7) veterans would have an unreformable habit of typing one or the other. https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=3DV7/usr/man/man7/man.7 I'd have been sterner--and probably less fondly remembered by my peers. (While I'm armchair quarterbacking Doug's plays of 45 years ago, oh, how I wish he hadn't have used input traps for anything in man(7).[1]) > Still, compatibility with ms(7) would make it slightly easier to > trasnfer learning from man(7) to ms(7), would one learn it. I know > many other macros are incompatible in bad ways, but the less the > better, no? That's true, but these days the knowledge transfer is, I submit, vastly more likely to go the other way; that is, people will be exposed to man(7) as their first roff macro language, and might decide to pick up ms(7). At that point, they'd have to learn that `LP` and `PP` do _different_ things. I think it's actually better if they _don't_ have to unlearn the "fact" (applicable only to man(7)) that they are exactly the same. Better, I believe, to promote only `P` in man(7). Anyone wanting to pick up mm(7) will still enjoy some knowledge transfer. Without arguments, `P` in mm(7) "does what you mean". (I will not elaborate here on what that means; see the groff_mm(7) man page in groff 1.23.0 and please God not an earlier version.) Regards, Branden [1] In practice, nearly no one took them up for any purpose except the one place you _had_ to use them: `TP`. --n5mpo2te5njim5qx Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc" -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iQIzBAABCAAdFiEEh3PWHWjjDgcrENwa0Z6cfXEmbc4FAmU6hYYACgkQ0Z6cfXEm bc7Bwg//TcARua4QzxO8Npse+1IexqTpQrm6XezD7NrtnoYurkDLbexrcUOJiXiY Z3TB3JsHX+Lqgvhg8qlstm4YRyQ1PdWbMONtZCH4jukYdwj8FuD8bg+ZTttQylOi aHZylTB8k8QeVerqjZxu0Q7FH47AJZCBsqybdTX+CtbM8g4Ii0k3z63jKqo7xjfI mqa++wV12OObvqMdZWDlLvlBdAZIGAuXWn2HgOMgMAOc69dnn7eifl5VV3vWD/HP WVDr9CoMh6ZPkiW0LD8JJr6tg22l8x6zLHw0u+ILmxCKZiwoJXmuv/ED6s3Fyaby SepXPLgQCgDzk1P3WPzegLO0fQr0Uat7paEWPj/+ra2fVnPBrfrMy5ITJRb6lk4y p0B6nThnfW8krWhY2AJwfy31KdII1GjkKUXMc0j1GpnIDPd8yekvAtsMv5ejuA7M AOa0/TAg8Q9tW1iSoUyiWkaImtNd1dQw+XKG95ri1JkFP6+N0Igh/Aj5AdCtYLmD CKh7axpb1WvSwpF2K68+LfWa/kAcTExi6UOzzzd+0F/c6ftB9NXmpISUTbFV3RN/ OzOXvt03YDQ9txrt9Nzlf4gC/fgl94Ypfm+ohhJ9vpbw66MZewcOWluTOWpvU/88 27q0+a76LvQBYrJq2jS8WDU0BmrZsWqdAAeqHvv0ewEbin+OEMA= =RRqw -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --n5mpo2te5njim5qx--