[bug #60478] doc/meref.me: unclear documentation of macros .IE, .IF, .GE, .GF

[Dave]

URL:
  <https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?60478>

                 Summary: doc/meref.me: unclear documentation of macros .IE,
.IF, .GE, .GF
                 Project: GNU troff
            Submitted by: barx
            Submitted on: Thu 29 Apr 2021 09:14:16 AM CDT
                Category: Macro - me
                Severity: 3 - Normal
              Item Group: Documentation
                  Status: None
                 Privacy: Public
             Assigned to: None
             Open/Closed: Open
         Discussion Lock: Any
         Planned Release: None

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Details:

Section 9 (Preprocessor Support) of doc/meref.me documents four of its
preprocessor ending macros thus:

  .IE        End ideal picture.
  .IF        End ideal picture (alternate form).
  .GE        End gremlin picture.
  .GF        End gremlin picture (alternate form).

No other text in this section reveals the difference between these regular and
"alternate" ending macros.

This manual's Summary section is minusculely more illuminating, documenting
these four macros as:

  .GE   end gremlin picture
  .GF   end gremlin picture (with flyback)
  .IE   end ideal picture
  .IF   end ideal picture (with flyback)

The word "flyback" appears nowhere else in the manual, however, so the user is
still left to guess what this means.

The only other -me-specific documentation, doc/meintro.me, does not document
these macros at all (unsurprisingly, given its scope).

Outside -me documentation, the src/preproc/grn/grn.1.man man page clears this
up for the .GE/.GF pair: "[When .GE specifies] the end of the picture, the
position on the page is the bottom of the gremlin picture. If the grn entry is
ended with .GF instead of .GE, the position is left at the top of the
picture."

The _ideal_ preprocessor is not included with groff, so no other groff
documentation covers .IE and .IF, but it's a reasonable guess (given the
identical wording to the .GE/.GF pair) that the distinction between them is
the same as for .GE and .GF.

In any case, meref.me should be less vague about the differences between these
macros.




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