Hello Branden, On Wed, 27 Feb 2019 at 10:48, G. Branden Robinson <g.branden.robinson@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > At 2019-02-27T10:09:44+0100, Michael Kerrisk (man-pages) wrote: > > Bjarni, > > > > On 2/16/19 7:03 PM, Bjarni Ingi Gislason wrote: > > > Usage: .Rv -std in sections 2 and 3 only (#1672) > > > > > > The output from "nroff" and "groff" is unchanged > > > > Can you please elaborate on what the problem problem is (., > > how do you see the warning)? > > I can't answer the parenthetical definitively--I think Bjarni has > customized local versions of man-db and groff that enable or supplement > warnings, making a kind of lint tool for man pages. > > But I think I can speak to the underlying change. The names of some > symbols in the mdoc macro package got their "doc-" prefixes restored to > them in groff 1.22.4. They had been getting rewritten by "the stripper" > in the groff source tree, a sed script which applies a bunch of > transforms to a few of the macro packages to make them run more > efficiently. Groff's parser does not tokenize its input, let alone > compile it down to an intermediate representation, so for instance if > you have a 72-character comment line inside a macro definition or loop, > thus: > > .\" ******************************************************************** > > ...groff will re-parse the 73 characters (counting the newline) every > time the macro is called or the loop iterates. > > Unfortunately it is only the stripped version of the macro packages that > get installed, which makes them pretty hostile to user comprehension, > like JavaScript minification. > > Opinions on the utility of the stripper script among the groff > development team are mixed. One thing no one cared to defend was using > the stripper to change the names of string or number registers, as those > are part of the interface of a macro package, not cosmetic or stylistic > stuff. The whole issue arose because the stripper script inadvertently > renamed a symbol in "mom", an entirely different macro package, contrary > to the knowledge and intentions of its developer. > > Here is the commit in question. > > https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff-commit/2017-11/msg00098.html > > Come to think of it, because this _was_ an interface change for mdoc, > this change should have been documented in the NEWS file for groff > 1.22.4. That it was not was my oversight, and I apologize. So, summary: should I apply Bjarni's patch? Or does this lead to back-compatibility problems? Cheers, Michael -- Michael Kerrisk Linux man-pages maintainer; http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/ Linux/UNIX System Programming Training: http://man7.org/training/
