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Re: [Groff] ASCII Minus Sign in man Pages.


From: Clarke Echols
Subject: Re: [Groff] ASCII Minus Sign in man Pages.
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2017 23:11:58 -0600
User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/45.8.0

Back in the early 1970s, it was called "syntax" when I was
writing programs in assembler and BASIC.

[My first encounter with AT&T Unix manuals and manpages was in
1985, and SYNOPSIS was a new term for me.  (I was a hardware
engineer in the rest of the 1970s, and writing user manuals
for data communication and hardware support until Unix
invaded my world with Unix field-support manuals in 1984.  Then
I inherited the Unix reference manual (manpages) until the end
of 1985 until I took over the HP-UX Reference from 1989 through
1992 when it was 3000 pages in 3 volumes, and weighed close to
10 pounds (US weight).  We called it "the brick" for obvious
reasons. :-) ]

But it makes a lot of sense, because it is a quick-look at the
keywords, options, and arguments, used in an environment where
you might be looking for information about a command (or "utility"
as AT&T called them), or it could be to guide the use of function
calls in system or library calls.

Thus it is a convenient, quick way to see what to do or how to
structure your code to work in a C or other program.

And in that context, "syntax" tends to look like an inaccurate
term in that broader context.

I had to go through a transition in my thinking as a result, but
after a few months, it seemed perfectly naturally -- especially
after 5 years of working almost exclusively on manpages before I
ended up designing and creating online help for HP-UX system
administration software from 1993 through most of 1999 before I
retired and left the corporate world.

Clarke


On 04/20/2017 07:00 PM, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
At 2017-04-20T18:04:00-0600, Clarke Echols wrote:
When I was responsible for all of the manpages in HP's HP-UX (Unix)
reference manual and online, I always *typeset* with Courier bold, and
used the simple hyphen character because it was all monospace.

Courier was standard for all literals in SYNTAX, including command
name, and options such as -r, -f, etc.  Only variable arguments such
as "filename", directory name, etc.  were always in italic.  This
convention was also used in the DESCRIPTION, EXAMPLES, and other such
sections.

If a minus sign appeared in regular text, I always used \(mi.
[...]
I used the .C name for macros, as in .CI, .IC, for command lines in the
SYNOPSIS.
What was/is the distinction between the "Syntax" and "Synopsis"
headings?  I've only seen the former occasionally, and when I have, it's
been exactly what is elsewhere called a "Synopsis".

Regards,
Branden

--
Clarke Echols
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www.ClarkeEchols.com

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