Hi Alex, Thanks for clarifying a couple of points. I have... ...counter-clarifications! :P At 2025-01-14T16:33:37+0100, Alejandro Colomar wrote: > On Tue, Jan 14, 2025 at 09:15:04AM -0600, G. Branden Robinson wrote: > > At 2025-01-14T14:19:49+0100, Alejandro Colomar wrote: > > > > @@ -95,8 +95,8 @@ .SS Title line > > > > The arguments of the command are as follows: > > > > .TP > > > > .I title > > > > -The title of the man page, written in all caps (e.g., > > > > -.IR MAN-PAGES ). > > > > +The title of the man page, written in lowercase (e.g., > > > > +.IR man-pages ). > > To try to bring order to the chaos and confusion surrounding this > > subject, I use the term "identifier". > > For consistency with "TH" (title heading?), I think I prefer "title". Except in *roff(7), "titles" are the term given to headers and footers collectively; the content of these is precisely what the `TH` macro configures; and arguments beyond its first are just determinative of "title" content. Thus: $ echo '.TH foo 1 2025-01-14 "groff test suite"' | nroff -rLL=72n -man foo(1) General Commands Manual foo(1) groff test suite 2025‐01‐14 foo(1) > > I don't understand how the "name" is distinct from the "title" in > > your usage. > > Name is "SH Name"; Okay. There's no collision in our usages here, since I avoid that term for any other purpose in man page anatomy (except where qualified to clarify it, as with "file name"). > title is TH's $1; I followed this convention for my first few years as a groff developer but ran into problems telling unlike things apart. That is why I distinguish titles from identifiers, as the quoted material in my previous reply explained. > filename is the file name. No disagreement here. I would say that "filename" is an excellent C identifier, but it is not English. Novice man page authors have a terrible habit of porting C identifiers into English prose as if they were the same language. Possibly this practice arises from a feeling of greater confidence and a self-assessment of more experience expressing themselves in C than in English. > > > if the name is something like UTF-8, > > > > (by which you mean "uses code points outside the Basic Latin range") > > Nope. I meant UTF-8(7): Oh, ha! I'd have quoted it in that case -- use/mention distinction. ;-) > $ find man/ | grep -i utf-8 | xargs grep -A1 -e ^.SH.N -e ^.TH > .TH UTF-8 7 (date) "Linux man-pages (unreleased)" > .SH NAME > UTF-8 \- an ASCII compatible multibyte Unicode encoding Yes. On my system, I see both /usr/share/man/man7/utf-8.7.gz /usr/share/man/man7/utf8.7.gz installed. They (and "iso_8859-1.7.gz" and friends) are examples of why there might be a case distinction between the man page identifier and the file name. The proper way to spell "UTF-8" is in fact in caps. ...but at the same time we're all children of Ken Thompson, and at a shell prompt we experience great horror at the prospect of employing the shift key. (Thompson carries this abhorrence over to emails as well.) Regards, Branden
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