[CC += groff]
Hi Jakub, Branden,
On 2023-08-01 03:31, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> Hi Jakub,
>
> At 2023-08-01T00:16:41+0200, Jakub Wilk wrote:
>> * G. Branden Robinson <g.branden.robinson@xxxxxxxxx>, 2023-07-31 12:52:
>>> Use the man(7) macro `MR`, new to groff 1.23.0,
>>
>> Given that this version of groff was released approximately
>> yesterday¹, this is very premature.
>>
>> NACK from me.
>>
>> ¹ More precisely, about a month ago.
>
> 5 July UTC, to be (a little) more precise.
>
> Linux man-pages release scheduling is Alex's prerogative, not mine.
I just made a new release, so that we have plenty of time for the next
one. I don't expect to make a new one in months. :)
> He
> asked me (a long time ago) to deliver this after groff 1.23.0 was
> released. That is what I have tried to do.
Thanks!
>
>>> When the text of all Linux man-pages documents (excluding those
>>> containing only `so` requests) is dumped, with adjustment mode 'l'
>>> ("-dAD=l") and automatic hyphenation disabled ("-rHY=0") before and
>>> after this change, there is no change to rendered output.
>>
>> That's not what I'm seeing with Debian groff 1.22.4-10 (which seems to
>> have .MR backported).
>
> Not exactly. It has a compatible stopgap measure to keep Debian stable
> from going wrong in the event that any package using `MR` in its man
> pages gets backported to bookworm (Debian 12).
>
> https://salsa.debian.org/debian/groff/-/merge_requests/4
Yep; probably the most relevant case is contributors to this project
using Debian Stable to produce write their patches.
>
> groff 1.22.4 man(7) does not support the `MF` string (see below). That
> could be backported too, but there seems no point before there is a
> concrete need.
>
>> After applying the patch, the man page references are typeset in
>> italics,
>
> For great justice! (See below.)
Still I think this should be documented in our commit. Would you
please send a paragraph (and the position at which you'd place it)
with which I can amend the commit?
>
>> which is ugly
>
> See my recent exchanges with Lennart Jablonka on this list.
>
>> and against man-pages(7) recommendations.
Well, we should update those to use MR. Branden is right that
italics is more appropriate. He has defended that position very
well, so I'll let him defend that point. The conversation to
which he referred was:
<https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff/2021-08/msg00034.html>
>
> Not all man pages are bound by man-pages(7) style suggestions.
>
> Further, /etc/groff/man.local is a conffile, and assuming it's stock (to
> simplify the pattern matching below), you can do this:
>
> sed -i -e 's/IR/BR/' /etc/groff/man.local
>
> And that way, even if someone backports groff 1.23.0 itself to Debian
> stable, you will not be disturbed by the choice of font for man page
> cross references.
>
> It might be helpful to recap the `MR` feature description from the
> 1.23.0 NEWS file and release announcement. One of its objectives is to
> _stop_ prescribing a typeface for these things, though of course it has
> a default, as it must.
But we should document in the commit message that the MR default implies
a behavior change in our pages.
Cheers,
Alex
>
> Regards,
> Branden
--
<http://www.alejandro-colomar.es/>
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