Re: .RS

["G. Branden Robinson" <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com>]

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At 2020-11-12T21:57:34+0100, Alejandro Colomar (man-pages) wrote:
> > * [.in 4] simply doesn't seem to work at all.

It's important here to check what request comes next.  Many of the man
macros will change the indentation again on you.

> > * [.RS 4] and [.RS +4n] seem to be equivalent.
> > * [.RS 4] is different (worse) than [.in +4n]
> >           in some very specific scenario:
> > 
> and [.in 4n] seems to indent to absolute column 4.

Yes.  Many *roff requests are documented like .in is in groff(7).

   .in ±N    Change indentation according to ±N (default scaling indica‐
             tor m).

The ± indicates an optional sign.  Where there is no sign, the .in
request performs absolute positioning.  I might have led you astray by
bringing up the "|" operator before; a hazard of my unfortunate tendency
to ramble when composing emails in haste.

The '+' that .RS forces as a prefix to its argument before passing it to
.in prevents the _macro_ argument from being interpreted as an absolute
position (even if the "|" operator is used).

.TH foo 1 2020-11-13 "foo 1.2.3"
.SH Name
bar \- baz
.SH Description
foo
.RS 4n
indent
.RS |5n
bar
.RE
.RE

In the above example, "bar" is set 5 ens to the right of "foo", even
though we tried to set it much farther left.

Regards,
Branden

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