Re: [groff] Bold v Italics: Dawn of Justice

[Larry Kollar]

> Ingo Schwarze <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
>> Use italics
> 
>> for environment variables,
>> for enumeration or preprocessor constants in C,
> 
> I don't particularly like that, and i also don't particularly like
> Werner's alternative suggestion of setting them in bold; i'd prefer
> roman, even though that also has downsides.  But given that man(7)
> doesn't really offer a good option for these, i don't feel strongly
> either way.

Environment variables are usually all caps, and (conventionally) so
are preprocessor constants. Roman should be enough, because the
ALL CAPS-ness makes them stand out. Not sure about what to do
about enums.


> for names of works of software
>> (including commands and functions,
> 
> Here, i strongly disagree.  I consider it important that these are
> consistently set in bold.

Since monospace isn’t available, I really don’t have a preference.
Pick one and stick with it.

The above is a perfect example of why semantic markup has
advantages—I presume man has no equivalent to ms’s .CW because
its original display was terminals or line printers. Using semantic
markup, say “.CM” (command) and/or “.FN” (function), we could have
had terminal-friendly highlighting and monospace in typeset documents.

</rant>

        Larry