Re: [RFC] memusage.1, uri.7, user-keyring.7, user-session-keyring.7, ld.so.8, tzselect.8: srcfix: Replace \f markup by .

["Michael Kerrisk (man-pages)" <mtk.manpages@gmail.com>]

Hi ALex,

On 11/16/20 1:33 AM, Alejandro Colomar (man-pages) wrote:
> Hi Michael,
> 
> On 11/15/20 9:54 PM, Michael Kerrisk (man-pages) wrote:

[...]

> So, except for zic.8, zdump.8, and bpf-helpers.7,
> what do you think about the current usage of \f?
> 
> I've seen a lot of appearances (many thousands),
> and many of them should probably be fixed.
> 
> I think a script to fix them might be a bit difficult,
> but a small C program might be easier to write.

My preference is to avoid \f in favor of .I/.B/etc where possible,
since I find the latter form is often easier to read in the source.

But, as you note, that's not easy in some cases. Every now and then,
when I'm edit some part of a page that uses \f, I'll switch over
to .I/.B/etc.

But, I would prefer not to have a global edit, since:
* Nothing is really broken.
* It's a lot of churn.
* There's the possibility of errors in the change.

Thanks,

Michael

-- 
Michael Kerrisk
Linux man-pages maintainer; http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/
Linux/UNIX System Programming Training: http://man7.org/training/