Re: [Groff] Status of the portability work, and plans for the future

[Werner LEMBERG]

> > > On reflection, I think that should probably be ".ad b".  It's
> > > supposed to be restoring the normal adjustment mode for a man
> > > page.
> >
> > I disagree.  Perhaps someone likes to make the appearance of man
> > pages formatted with -man similar to the ones formatted with
> > -mdoc, this is, using ragged-right.
>
> Then I don't know what the right thing is here.  I agree with your
> design intention, but I can't see how to implement it robustly.

Well, doclifter ignores it anyway, doesn't it?

> Even querying and storing the current state of adjustment in .SY to
> be restored in .YS is likely to lead to subtle bugs, as I expect
> many writing several .SY invocations in a row are likely to forget
> to close any but the last one.

This can be handled quite easily.  Considering

  .SY
  .SY
  .YS

it's just necessary to test a flag, say, \n(sy, which is set by the
first .SY call.  If it's still set in the next call to .SY, don't call
the .ad request.

> > I think I'll call the extension file `an-ext.tmac'.
>
> I did 'cvs up' and no such file is in the archive yet.

Yep.

> I'll send you a copy along with my patch set.

Thanks in advance.

> > Instead of omitting I ask you to use the following code:
> >
> >   .if n \
> >   .  if \n(.g \
> >   .    do mso tty-char.tmac
>
> I'll reply to your later mail about this.

Please ignore this.  The other solution I've proposed is better.

> > It's not really clear to me what you mean with `macro coders'.
>
> The people who wrote the troff macros in the existing pages.

Well, the macros just work.  Portability issues simply haven't been
considered.


   Werner