man page base paragraph inset/indentation (was: [PATCH v3] close_range.2: Add _GNU_SOURCE and unistd.h to SYNOPSIS)

["G. Branden Robinson" <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com>]

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Hi folks,

At 2024-02-18T14:08:59+0100, Alejandro Colomar wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 18, 2024 at 01:00:35PM +0100, Mark Wielaard wrote:
> > Note that there is now one line which is > 80 chars.
> > You can fix that using this from the original fix,
> > that splits and indents the comment on two lines:
> > 
> > > > +.BR "#include <linux/close_range.h>" " /* Definition of " CLOSE_RANGE_* "
> > > > +.BR "" "                                  constants */"
> 
> Ahhh, I see.  I'm using groff from git (what will be groff-1.24.0 some
> day), which changes the default indentation from 7 to 5, which is why
> it fits in the line for me.  Thanks for reporting that!  I'll fix it
> in a moment.

This rendering parameter is now configurable, of course, to accommodate
people who prefer the "old" one.  So when generating cat pages, doing
diffs, or similar, you can pass the following option to GNU troff(1):

-rBP=7n

This can be done for any version of GNU troff; versions of the GNU
man(7) macro package that are too told will simply (and silently) ignore
it, and use a base paragraph inset of 7n regardless.

Here's the NEWS item from the forthcoming groff 1.24.0.

o The an (man) and doc (mdoc) macro packages now support a `BP` register
  to configure the ("base") paragraph inset amount; that is the amount
  used by man(7) for paragraphs not within an `RS`/`RE` relative inset,
  and in mdoc(7) for all paragraphs.  Formerly, the `IN` register
  configured this amount with other indentation and inset amount
  parameters used by man(7).  (In mdoc(7), it had no other purpose.)
  The base paragraph indentation default is now 5n, corresponding to
  that used by historical man(7) and mdoc(7) implementations going back
  to Unix Version 7 (1979) and 4.3BSD-Reno (1990), respectively.

Ingo Schwarze has made a parallel change to mandoc(1), and I expect it
to show up in the next release thereof.

https://cvsweb.bsd.lv/mandoc/man_term.c?rev=1.244&content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup&sortby=date

Regards,
Branden

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