Hi, Branden! On 3/20/22 15:53, G. Branden Robinson wrote: > Hi, Alex! > > At 2022-03-14T15:05:49+0100, Alejandro Colomar (man-pages) wrote: >> Always start sentences after '.' in a new line. >> That's already covered by "semantic newlines" (see above), >> but it's especially important in this case because >> groff(1) prints (at least) 2 spaces after '.' normally, >> but if you write it this way it doesn't. >> >> BTW, Branden, >> I CCd you because I didn't find this documented in groff(7), >> or at least I couldn't find it. >> I tried /\.[^ [a-z]] and also keywords like period, point or dot, >> but no luck. >> Is it documented anywhere? > > It used to be one of those things everybody just "knew" about writing in > *roff--back when people hung on Brian Kernighan's every word[1]--but > over the years the knowledge has atrophied. Okay. > > The groff 1.22.4 Texinfo manual has the following. I believe this > material is adapted from Eric Allman's paper "Writing Papers with NROFF > using -me". > > [[ > 3 Tutorial for Macro Users > ************************** > [...] > > * End each sentence with two spaces - or better, start each sentence > on a new line. 'gtroff' recognizes characters that usually end a > sentence, and inserts sentence space accordingly. Ahh, that paragraph is what I was looking for. [...] > > • Set your text editor’s line length to 72 characters or > fewer; see the subsections below. This limit, combined > with the previous advice regarding breaking around > punctuation, makes it less common that an input line will > wrap in your text editor, and thus will help you perceive > excessively long constructions in your text. Recall that > natural languages originate in speech, not writing, and > that punctuation is correlated with pauses for breathing > and changes in prosody. That last line should be reminded more often :) [...] > This point about beginning sentences only on new input lines _is_ > missing from groff_man_style(7). As noted in the groff 1.22.4 NEWS > file: > > o ... groff_man(7) has been expanded and largely rewritten ... to be > more helpful and accessible to man page writers who may never read any > other groff documentation. > > groff_man_style(7) is now fulfilling this role, since a quick reference > for experienced man page writers remains desirable. (I avoid letting > the two drift out of sync by generating both from an m4 master > document.) > > I've been dithering over writing a new introductory section just for > groff_man_style(7) to present an example of a partial man page and use > it to explain typesetting terms that are inescapable even in the reduced > domain of man pages: breaking, filling, adjustment, hyphenation, and the > notorious matter of supplementary inter-sentence space. > > As you will have observed, when I write in a hurry, I write a lot. The > foregoing notional material needs to be written well, and that means > taking the time to cook the fat off. I'll try to find some time to read the whole pages... Thank you very much for your (very) detailed responses! :-) Cheers, Alex -- Alejandro Colomar Linux man-pages comaintainer; https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/ http://www.alejandro-colomar.es/
