Re: [Nmh-workers] Message with repeated content

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Paul,

> >     The first occurrence of a component is used,
> >     e.g.\& .mh_profile's trumps $MHSHOW's.
...
> is '\&' a hard space?

No, it's a non-printing, zero-width character.  See 4.1 in Kernighan's
http://troff.org/54.pdf.  troff rightly believes in a bigger space at
the end of a sentence than between words.  :-)  If troff sees the end of
a sentence at the end of an *input* line then it treats it as if two
spaces had been typed after it, i.e.

    The C Programming Language.  The Unix Programming
    Environment.

and

    The C Programming Language.
    The Unix Programming Environment.

are equivalent.  If the man page's source gets re-formated and `e.g.'
ends up at the end of a line then an overly large space will appear
after it.  By writing it as `e.g.\&' I ensure the `.' will not appear at
the end of an input line in the future and good practice when the `.'
isn't the end of a sentence.

> (for some reason i have it my head that the latin-isms ("i.e.",
> "e.g.") should always be followed by a comma, but since i have no idea
> where i learned that, and i don't think it was in school, it's
> probably wrong.)

I understand it's usual to follow e.g. or i.e. with a comma in the USA.
It's a lot less common over here in England.  :-)

Cheers, Ralph.