Re: [Groff] UTP: appa

[Tadziu Hoffmann]

> There are so many font changes in it in the commands description
> of sed, awk and friends. between constant width, italic,
> constant,...  I really don't know the best way doing it.
> 
> .CW [/\c
> .I pattern\c
> .CW /]=
> 
> or
> 
> .CW [\fIpattern\fP]=
> 
> or
> 
> \f(CW[\fIpattern\fP]=\fP
> 
> so I ended up mixing the styles.
> Any advice for me?

My suggestion would be a small set of macros for this purpose,
like the manual page font-alternating macros (which were, I
presume, specifically designed for such situations).  This would
clean up the coding of the manuscript considerably.  For example,

  .CI / pattern /

would alternate between "computer" font and italic font.

Since concatenating type in three or more different fonts is less
common, this would still be done in multiple input lines.  (Also,
the number of macros required for all possible permutations would
become rather large.)

  .RC [ / \c
  .IC pattern / \c
  .RC [ ,/ \c
  .IC pattern / \c
  .RC ]] {
  .br
  .I  command1
  .br
  .I  command2
  .br
  .C  }

or

  .RC [ / \c
  .I  pattern \c
  .CR / [ ,/ \c
  .I  pattern \c
  .CR / ]] {
  .br
  .I  command1
  .br
  .I  command2
  .br
  .C  }