[Colin and Ingo dropped from CC since I know they read the groff list] Hi Alex, At 2022-07-22T01:16:49+0200, Alejandro Colomar wrote: > On 7/21/22 20:36, G. Branden Robinson wrote: > > At 2022-07-21T16:29:21+0200, Alejandro Colomar wrote: > > > I've never been convinced about the page title being in all caps > > > in the .TH line. [...] > > > I'd like to know why this has been the case historically, and any > > > opinions you might have about me changing the man-pages to use the > > > same caps as the actual identifier that I'm documenting (most of > > > the time that would mean lowercase). Basically, the same rules as > > > within .SH NAME. [...] > > After that--the V4 manual was the first to be typeset with > > troff--the practice of full-capping the page titles in the headers > > was retained. > > > > How deliberate a choice this was is not something I can answer. The > > decision was made in 1972. You could ask some of the surviving > > principal Bell Labs CSRC figures on the TUHS mailing list. > > Is Doug one of them? I've seem him on the groff@ list from time to > time. I added the groff@ list, in case this is of interest to someone > there. Yes, Doug McIlroy follows both the groff and TUHS lists. > Heh! You've never tried to clone the Linux man-pages in Windows or MacOS, > it seems :p No, can't say I've had the...pleasure. > At least, _Exit(2) and _exit(2) point to the same page. nan(3) and > NAN(3) don't, though! Pretty gross. A useful counterexample of good practice, though. > We can't blame the writers, since the identifiers have those names in > C. Luckily, man(1) shows you the right page if you specify the right > string. Yes, and at least they're closely related and from the same project. This is the only man page I know of that documents only simple (i.e., not function-like) C preprocessor macros. You're more conversant with libc-ish man pages so you may know of others, but this is the sort of content that, as a user, I would prefer to find in, say, a "math.h(3)" man page. Having these constants in a page by themselves does little to situate them within the context of the C math library API. But I know I have suggested this to you before. ;-) I observe that the most popular simple macro of all, NULL, has no man page. > I feel a need to fix this lack of precision in the page titles. > Unless someone opposes to it with some strong reason, which I don't > expect. You never know. But keep in mind that a strong objection is not the same thing as a strong reason. > It'll take some time to do it, but if no-one speaks in a reasonable > time, I'll start doing it :). We should all practice our scowling faces for anyone who dares to promulgate man pages named "lS", "prIntf", or similar. Regards, Branden
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: PGP signature
