[bug #61070] [troff] want to drop default "User Abort." text from .ab request

[Dave]

Follow-up Comment #2, bug #61070 (project groff):

Even in its most back-compatible mode (-x0), Heirloom troff gives some useful
information when .ab is called with no argument (though it also exits with a 0
status).


$ troff -x0 <<< '.ab'
troff: User Abort; line 1, file <standard input>

$ echo $?
0


Whether that's evidence that AT&T troff's bare .ab was a bit more chatty, or
that Heirloom's implementers didn't consider historical .ab output sacrosanct,
I cannot say -- but I think either one makes the case that we needn't be
married to the output groff's .ab currently offers.

So "make groff stderr output match Heirloom's" could be yet another option,
maybe D1.

B1 and B2 are my least favorites: they add a new request that offers no real
new functionality, just tweaks functionality offered by an existing request;
and the request they add will be interpreted by strictly conforming historical
implementations as ".ab" with the argument "ort" anyway.

But that's all on purely theoretical grounds; I've never had occasion to use
.ab in real life, so I don't have any strong opinion about how it works.

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