Hi Alex,
At 2023-07-30T17:35:06+0200, Alejandro Colomar wrote:
> That's the reason to use a non-breaking space over a breaking space.
> However, I'd also like to see justification for using a non-breaking
> space over no space at all.
Readability.
Consider the synopsis of groff(1) itself.
groff [-abcCeEgGijklNpRsStUVXzZ] [-d cs] [-d name=string]
[-D enc] [-f fam] [-F dir] [-I dir] [-K enc] [-L arg]
[-m name] [-M dir] [-n num] [-o list] [-P arg] [-r cn]
[-r reg=expr] [-T dev] [-w name] [-W name] [file ...]
Pasting into this email, it's stripped of all its formatting, a scenario
we can imagine affects some number of users, especially those confused
by the old overstriking convention and who employ crude tools.
groff [-abcCeEgGijklNpRsStUVXzZ] [-dcs] [-d name=string]
[-Denc] [-ffam] [-Fdir] [-Idir] [-Kenc] [-Larg]
[-mname] [-Mdir] [-nnum] [-olist] [-Parg] [-rcn]
[-rreg=expr] [-Tdev] [-wname] [-Wname] [file ...]
Is that as easy to make sense of? Maybe it is for some people,
especially if they already know that groff doesn't ever use a single
dash as a prefix for a long option name. But there are conventions
other than GNU's.
xclock [ -help ] [ -analog | -digital ] [ -brief ] [ -chime ] [ -hd
color ] [ -hl color ] [ -update seconds ] [ -strftime format ] [
-twelve | ‐twentyfour | ‐utime ] [ -padding number ] [ -norender ] [
-render ] [ -sharp ] [ -face pattern ]
That actually proves to be a better example of bad formatting than I had
hoped for--look at all those problems! Anyway, an expert can figure out
that "-utime" doesn't refer to an option "-u" that takes a metasyntactic
"time" as an argument. But we shouldn't write man pages only for the
attention of experts.
Regards,
Branden
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