Re: [PATCH] rtnetlink.7: Document struct ifa_cacheinfo

Alejandro Colomar
2024-11-06T18:02:09Z

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Hi Branden,

On Wed, Nov 06, 2024 at 11:45:31AM GMT, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> You're not bringing any new information to the table, and you don't
> appear to understand why the two-space rule is in place for _typesetting
> software_. I don't just mean *roff, but TeX as well.
>
> Neither of these is a WYSIWYG system. Neither of them is Markdown.
>
> The rule is not there so that people can argue over how many space
> widths should separate sentences. The rule is there so that the
> formatter knows where the boundaries between sentences _are_.

Actually, in this case it was about the use of intersentence space in a
commit message. It was not about the contents of a manual page itself.

However, I think that loss of information is equally bad for a human
than for a type-setting system such as roff(1) or TeX.

> If you despise the use of two spaces between sentences in a *roff source
> document, there's an easy solution: use what Alex calls "semantic
> newlines".
>
> https://www.gnu.org/software/groff/manual/groff.html.node/Sentences.html#Sentences

[...]

> Arguing about the number of spaces between sentences in a discussion of
> "semantic newlines" (or whatever you want to call them) is
> counterproductive and wasteful of time.

Hmmm, you're right. Using semantic newlines completely removes
intersentence spaces in manual pages; we shouldn't document that in
man-pages(7). However, for commit messages I still want to enforce
two spaces, so we should probably document it in CONTRIBUTING.d/patches.

Have a lovely night!
Alex

--
<https://www.alejandro-colomar.es/>