Hi Ingo, On Thu, Oct 26, 2023 at 07:52:13PM +0200, Ingo Schwarze wrote: > > I consider this a bikeshed discussion. Sure. But someone has to design the bike parkings. I find a lot awful bike parkings that harm bike's wheels, and have to park it in a sign or tree nearby. > > Given that Branden apparently wants to > * promote .P and deprecate .PP > * i don't want mandoc_man(7) to gratuitiously spread any more bad > man(7) style advice than is unavoidable by the fundamental decision > of declaring the whole man(7) language as obsolete, > i briefly considered changing mandoc_man(7). > > Currently it says: > > PP Begin an undecorated paragraph. The scope of a paragraph is closed > by a subsequent paragraph, sub-section, section, or end of file. > The saved paragraph left-margin width is reset to the default. > > LP A synonym for PP. > > P This synonym for PP is an AT&T System III UNIX extension later > adopted by 4.3BSD. > > and it declares LP and P deprecated by including only PP in the > MACRO OVERVIEW. > > All the arguments feel weak in either direction: > > * In theory, .PP is more portable than .P, but that is extremely > unlikely to ever matter in practice. > * As seen above, the similarities and subtle differences > when comparing to ms(7) can be employed as arguments in either > direction. > * The arguably more important similarity that HTML defines a

> but not a element can be regarded as a learning aid, > but it's still a weak argument because HTML and roff(7) are > very different domains and not similar in most other respects. > * The similarity of .P and

can also be turned around to be > levied as an argument for .PP: .P and

are *very different* > in so far as

is a block element, whereas .P is an in-line > macro that cannot participate in block nesting. In particular, > it can neither nest inside a list item, nor can anything be > contained inside a .P syntax tree node. In contrast to

, > .P does not represent a *paragraph*, but only a paragraph *break*. > * .PP is more similar to mdoc(7) .Pp. Again, a weak argument because > macro naming is totally different in both languages even in most > of the few cases where functionality matches, with the exception > of only .SH and .SS. > > Consequently, i tend to leave mandoc_man(7) just as it is and not > repaint the bikeshed. That way, the original .PP macro - with which > nothing is really wrong, except for the fundamental design mistake > of not being a block macro, a mistake it shares with mdoc(7) .Pp - > gets the full description, while the slighly younger .P gets the > compat info, even though that now is only of historical but not > of practical interest. Maybe still nice to keep both apart - gee, > yet another weak argument. > > If, for some reason, you feel strongly about it and think it is > important which one to promote, it might be possible to convince me to > deprecate .PP and list .P as the non-deprecated form even though it > is theoretically less portable. I must admit i don't particularly > like the idea, though. It feels like taking a gratuitious risk, > which does not feel ideal even if both the magnitude of the risk > and the benefit reaped are almost exactly zero. I don't think there's any urgent need to change mandoc_man(7), since good quality man(7) pages should not even read that page. I see it as a quick guide if you're in a mandoc(1) system and need to fix a man(7) bug or something. If you're going to write new man(7) pages, you probably want to read groff_man(7). But I think having 3 ways of spelling PP is bad, and I think deprecating at least LP, and possibly one of P or PP would be a good move. For making sure pages are fixed, we could an a warning that gets triggered always, so that projects have time to catch the change. As for chosing P or PP: I don't mind very much which, but P seems slightly better. Since both are relatively widespread, and I can help turn the balance in favour of any of them, I'll side with groff(1) using and recommending P. But yeah, it's a very arbitrary decission between P and PP. Cheers, Alex > > Yours, > Ingo --