[bug #45502] .if, .ie, .el parsing incompatible with V7 Unix & Heirloom troff

[Dave]

Follow-up Comment #2, bug #45502 (project groff):

Does strictly enforcing the V7 Unix troff syntax offer any compatibility
benefit?  That is, are there correctly formed historical constructions that
would be parsed incorrectly under groff as a result of this change?

I ask because changing groff's behavior 30 years on (assuming this behavior
dates to groff 1.0) also poses back-compatibility concerns for those authors
(perhaps unwittingly) taking advantage of this undocumented syntactical
relaxation.

Maybe the right solution is to document this as a GNU extension to traditional
troff syntax.  As long as it breaks no valid historical documents, it seems a
pretty clear-cut case of DWIM.

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