[bug #58682] [me] length of footnote separator is not as documented

[G. Branden Robinson]

Follow-up Comment #6, bug #58682 (project groff):


[comment #5 comment #5:]
> [comment #4 comment #4:]
> > I've tried to decide this with web searches.  I get hits,
> > but they rapidly become irrelevant, probably because "me"
> > with "reference manual" just isn't distinctive enough.
> 
> I was more thinking that someone searching that phrase as a title would put
the whole things in quotes (which would prevent the revised title from
matching), but maybe your average googler doesn't worry about such niceties.

I don't know how many people know about quoted matches.  I _assume_ it's more
than know about keyword exclusion with a prefixed `-`.

> > it looks like Allman was depositing regex syntax into his
> > explanation without warning
> 
> I don't think that's how he intended .*X -- I believe that's a literal dot
(technically not part of the macro name), a literal asterisk, and any letter
or digit.  My reading is that the -me macro set defines no macros beginning
with an asterisk, thus those names are all up for grabs in user space.

Ah, hmm.  Yes, I think you're closer.  But that is a tighter restriction than
is necessary on the name space, and not an example that is modeled in Allman's
own documents, the intro and reference manuals.  Maybe he meant the `*` as a
glob.

In any case, it's recast away now.

> > groff me(7) users are far less restricted with respect to
> > naming their macros, thanks to the removed length limit.
> 
> That's probably the key thing to point out here: any name of three or more
characters is automatically safe from conflicts.  With this freedom, modern
users are less likely to use potentially confusing characters like * in their
macro names at all.

Yes.  I am dithering on how much to talk about compatibility mode; unlike
groff's ms(7), its me(7) is written to be usable in that mode.  Or it mostly
was.  I fixed some nits in that area.

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