On 7/29/21 3:58 PM, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
Hi, Alex!
At 2021-07-29T14:18:30+0200, Alejandro Colomar (man-pages) wrote:
On 7/29/21 1:55 PM, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
Can you provide some examples of rendered output with '\ ' and '\~'?
I think I understand it, but a graphical example might be better.
Sure. Here you go.
[[
demo(1) General Commands Manual demo(1)
Name
demo - an illustration
Description
Observe the distinction between the handling of the “\ ” (backslash-
space) and \^ (backslash-tilde) escapes.
I guess \^ is just a typo and you meant here \~.
Today I was troubleshooting a segmentation fault and had occasion to
run the “ps -fC troff” command. I also had to run
“gdb ./build/troff ./build/core”. Here is some filler: XXXXXX
Mandatory for this illustration is the filling and adjusting of the
previous line.
nonce 1.0 2021-07-29 demo(1)
]]
Yes, that's what I thought you were saying. Thanks for confirming.
In the foregoing, the spaces in "ps -fC troff" do not participate in
adjustment, which leads to somewhat jarringly large inter-word gaps on
the rest of the line.
It's also, in my opinion, confusing to see and to write and speak
about.
I'm not sure I understood this sentence :)
I mean that it "\ " can be difficult to recognize in practice; you
_have_ to quote it or describe it somehow or the syntactically
significant space (to roff) gets lots among the regular word-separating
spaces in prose.
Got it now.
I'm not sure I understood the difference completely, I'll comment
about it when you provide some examples.
Sure. I hope the above helps. Here's the source of the example.
Yes. Well, before seeing the example above, I thought that I preferred
having a single space inside commands, as then the command itself is a
bit more readable. But since that slight increase in readability can
come with a considerable decrease in readability of the surrounding
text, I'm going to accept your proposal.
Would you mind sending a patch for man-pages(7)? :)
Thanks!
Alex
.TH demo 1 2021-07-29 "nonce 1.0"
.SH Name
demo \- an illustration
.SH Description
Observe the distinction between the handling of the
.RB \[lq] \[rs]\~ \[rq]
(backslash-space) and
.B \[rs]\[ha]
(backslash-tilde) escapes.
.P
Today I was troubleshooting a segmentation fault and had occasion to run
the
.RB \[lq] ps\ -fC\ troff \[rq]
command.
I also had to run
.RB \[lq] gdb\~./build/troff\~./build/core \[rq].
.
Here is some filler:
XXXXXX
\%Mandatory for this illustration is the filling and adjusting of the
previous line.
Regards,
Branden
--
Alejandro Colomar
Linux man-pages comaintainer; https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/
http://www.alejandro-colomar.es/
