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From: "G. Branden Robinson" <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com>
To: Alejandro Colomar <alx@kernel.org>
Cc: linux-man@vger.kernel.org
Subject: [PATCH v2 2/2] man.7: ffix
Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2023 12:28:06 -0500	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <64c4d17f.050a0220.3a505.03ec@mx.google.com> (raw)

v2: Use heading markup that doesn't confuse Git.

The `\c` escape sequence works in an argument to a macro call that is
part of a paragraph tag with font style alternation macros, but not the
ordinary font macros `B` and `I`.  This is because `TP`, `B`, and `I`
all set up input traps; the six font style alternation macros do not.

The old formatting would, for some versions of some formatters, set the
"[trailer]" text as part of the paragraph body, not the tag--like this.

       .UE    [trailer] Terminate the link text  of  the  preceding  .UR
              macro,  with  the  optional trailer (if present, usually a
(and so on)

This was a poorly understood--and undocumented--interaction of man(7)
features until recently.  Gory details involving nroff on Unix Version 7
(1979) running on a simulated PDP-11/45 are available.[1]

Here is a comparison of the former and new markup.

before
======
groff 1.22.3: BAD
groff 1.22.4: GOOD
groff 1.23.0: BAD
mandoc 1.14.6: BAD

now
===
groff 1.22.3: BAD
groff 1.22.4: GOOD
groff 1.23.0: GOOD
mandoc 1.14.6: GOOD

[1] https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?51468
    https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff/2022-06/msg00020.html

Signed-off-by: G. Branden Robinson <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com>
---
 man7/man.7 | 2 +-
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/man7/man.7 b/man7/man.7
index 258ce25da..583fe354f 100644
--- a/man7/man.7
+++ b/man7/man.7
@@ -249,7 +249,7 @@ .SS Hypertext link macros
 .B .UE
 macro as the link text.
 .TP
-.B .UE \c
+.BR .UE \~\c
 .RI [ trailer ]
 Terminate the link text of the preceding
 .B .UR
-- 
2.30.2

             reply	other threads:[~2023-07-29  8:44 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 2+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2023-07-28 17:28 G. Branden Robinson [this message]
2023-07-29 13:20 ` [PATCH v2 2/2] man.7: ffix Alejandro Colomar

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