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Branden Robinson" To: "Michael Kerrisk (man-pages)" Cc: Alejandro Colomar , linux-man , "libc-alpha@sourceware.org" Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 1/3] system_data_types.7: ffix Message-ID: <20200928111349.ifuc456mwfvvchyt@localhost.localdomain> References: <836b6d7d-4433-18d0-78aa-542c419c02f2@gmail.com> <20200928090322.2058-1-colomar.6.4.3@gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha256; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="k2vgg2rbs2ladanm" Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: NeoMutt/20180716 Precedence: bulk List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-man@vger.kernel.org --k2vgg2rbs2ladanm Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Hi Michael and Alex! At 2020-09-28T12:34:40+0200, Michael Kerrisk (man-pages) wrote: > On Mon, 28 Sep 2020 at 11:04, Alejandro Colomar = wrote: > > I had been using .PP because I hadn't seen .br before. > > > > I think .br is the correct format, > > following the pattern in already existing man pages. >=20 > I don't disagree with the formatting change, but I am wondering if > there's a better way to do it. There are a few ways to skin cats in even the restricted dialect of man(7) that I advocate. (The other groff developers seem to generally agree, but I will admit that I am probably more puritanical and maniacal than most of them. :) ) > I tend to consider (perhaps wrongly) that the use of .sp and .br is > unidiomatic, In my book you're certainly right. There are a few reasons for keeping the lexicon of macros/requests appearing in man pages small. 1. man pages, far more than any other type of *roff source document, get parsed by things are not *roff typesetting engines. The less *roff they have to simulate, the easier it will be for them to achieve intelligible rendering. mandoc(1) is probably the premier example in this respect, and I believe I understand from its current developer Ingo Schwarze that it handles rather more *roff than we would prefer. There have also been numerous "man2html" processors developed over the years, typically of somewhat dispiriting quality. 2. Even in the world of *roff typesetters there is diversity. For a long time groff was the only freely-licensed game in town, but nowadays I know of Heirloom Doctools, Plan 9, Solaris 10, DWB 3.3, and neatroff implementations. The smaller the language, the easier it is to get consensus and parity around portable constructs. 3. A smaller language is easier to learn and easier to retain for people who are part-time documenters. A person who only tackles documentation maintenance once every four to six months, say, is going to have an easier time with a language with maybe two dozen tags, several of which fall into groupings with a predictable naming pattern, than they will with, say, the 417 tags of DocBook[1]. For groff 1.22.4, released in December 2018, I made sure to front-load the groff_man(7) page with a quick reference for all non-deprecated tags. My hope is that man page writers who have been around the block with the man(7) language once before can type "man groff_man" and be refreshed after having to hit the space bar at most twice. A corollary of point (3), especially when it comes to the mixing of *roff requests with macros, is that their subtle interactions can be frustrating to learners--and even to experienced users. Someone who leans what .sp does may be surprised to find it not working between a section heading (.SH) and the first line of text afterwards. Similar frustrations can arise with the .in request when mixed with .RS and .RE. > and over the years I have replaced a large of them with alternatives. > (For example, in many cases, .sp was being used when .PP should have > been.) >=20 > If Branden does not tell us of something better, I will just apply > your patch as is. _Personally_, I prefer system_data_types(7) as of efbe7900b931789849a978c619106a8973e679cd to any intrusion of .br requests. And as a C programmer I find it clear enough. I do wonder about the huge list of header files providing `size_t`, but I guess my raised eyebrow is better aimed at the ISO C committee than here. :) Regards, Branden [1] https://tdg.docbook.org/tdg/4.5/docbook.html --k2vgg2rbs2ladanm Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc" -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iQIzBAEBCAAdFiEEh3PWHWjjDgcrENwa0Z6cfXEmbc4FAl9xxWYACgkQ0Z6cfXEm bc642A//UOsRJB7Pcv/hjLFG9GCxi5XCCBk5d4Q/Ui0ZGoodASFnml5lwn//lL3L ZIoEN2NevdYGYALf+UPpKkDpGqHpdSLPU04W5W5U53xdIqleDlZXsZu+tJ/pPd44 KQquGPlZ+0Zdp03SE1O/vz7tA8HKHszLh0ednm1HrsbIcD7z8LGs5fhEwohOaR1o sU3xm9IanosAgd3trsgOsYlzeH8V2I6JbCSQ25aKGXXAU/15dzro2gZts0/iGTyg N/ctMw+jGiAZkBM1FK+xS7K/3VNkEhj6ttBljupPt6nqOHlkRxbnDnLuEU53gnCQ 4QLXKuhkdQKbFeYZBsCGb6YoIATGC52jOcQHrknKu7m7xL2t63Z7nQtX+dALXf3e MM6HnfmPuvWdyu2eFhut4dyai0kXf4r7Agzjw3ZmKta3TfnFhHN8eyaRmQNjEhhV ZrGNaO0qIMFV0TW2hgf+ObLUvw/Fe2sHM5y/Op/Hb5zQTodetBOc+10goVx2d5P3 jiYMeUKg293inyMt/u+CuJ4t8Rev+wwAmNI9mxnyz/1qx8ZXaJesD47aht3gZmdE i2+ZhTzT6vL3TyP3kS0vgVJbwi4RNZ5w35GsTQkeO84RfYAAXd2shKYC8z/9XUiL OYTqd9OjaAuaG4jce75usQJ9wPl5Q35f5iAMnBm39puTN1pwgO4= =Ceh2 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --k2vgg2rbs2ladanm--