Re: [PATCH v2 1/3] proc_pid_fdinfo.5: Reduce indent for most of the page

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

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Hi Alex,

At 2024-11-02T11:39:37+0100, Alejandro Colomar wrote:
> And diffs are a real win for text.  Thus, semantic newlines are a real
> win for text.  "Write poems, not prose."  (Any chance we may get that
> warning added to groff(1)?  :D)

Yes, but I've kicked it out to groff 1.25 because a gift-wrapped
opportunity came along.  We get to retire a warning category and its
number.

groff(7) [1.23.0]:

Warnings
...
       el             16   The el request was encountered with no prior
                           corresponding ie request.

groff 1.24.0 [in preparation] NEWS:

*  The "el" warning category has been withdrawn.  If enabled (which it
   was not by default), the formatter would emit a diagnostic if it
   inferred an imbalance between `ie` and `el` requests.  Unfortunately
   its technique wasn't reliable and sometimes spuriously issued these
   warnings, and making it perfectly reliable did not look tractable.
   We recommend using brace escape sequences `\{` and `\}` to ensure
   that your control flow structures remain maintainable.

This was a 35-year-old bug (or incomplete feature) in GNU troff that as
far as I know first came to attention 10 years ago when the
then-Heirloom Doctools maintainer pointed out an incompatibility between
AT&T troff (from which Heirloom Doctools descends) and GNU troff.

https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?45502

More recently, Paul Eggert scored big-time grognard points by actually
depending on the AT&T troff behavior in the zic(8) man page.

https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?65474

We therefore _had_ to fix it.

The consequence is that the warning category `el` and bit 4 in the
warning mask integer are undefined for groff 1.24.

This was irresistible serendipity, because this warning category was (1)
not enabled by default and (2) probably used only by people who wouldn't
object to style warnings anyway.

In groff 1.25, I want to revive bit 4 as new warning category `style`.

Ending sentences before the end of a text line is something we can warn
about as discussed a while back, and I plan to do so.

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff/2022-06/msg00052.html

I've been collecting specimens of other contemplated style warnings.

https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?62776

Regards,
Branden

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