Hi Branden & Alex, On Sun Feb 9, 2025 at 12:46 AM CET, G. Branden Robinson wrote: > [...] > At 2025-02-08T23:57:07+0100, Alejandro Colomar wrote: > > On Sat, Feb 08, 2025 at 11:44:43PM +0100, Alejandro Colomar wrote: > > > Personally, I prefer tabs for actual programming. But for manual > > > pages, we can live with 4 spaces for $reasons. > > > > > > > [...] > > > > > +Description > > > + Indentation > > > + Use 4 spaces. Ideally, tabs would be preferred; however, they > > > + cause 5 spaces in manual pages, which is weird, so we use 4 > > > + spaces. > > > > On a side note, Branden, I've considered changing the manual pages' > > EXAMPLES' source code to use tabs, and let the formatter do whatever > > it wants. Do you have any opinion on that? > > The behavior of input tab characters is well-defined in *roff, but > defined _weirdly_ to most people's sensibilities when filling is > enabled. I won't quote the documentation here, merely point to it. > > https://www.gnu.org/software/groff/manual/groff.html.node/Tabs-and-Leaders.html > [...] TL;DR: With the default settings, a tab essentially translates into a horizontal motion. What this means is that when filling is on and you have text like this: int main(int argc, char **argv) { \tif (argc != 2 || strcmp(argv[1], "-h") == 0) { \t\tfprintf(stderr, usage, argv[0]); \t\treturn argc != 2; \t} \treturn 0; } it ends up like this: int main(int argc, char **argv) { if (argc != 2 || str‐ cmp(argv[1], "‐h") == 0) { fprintf(stderr, usage, argv[0]); return argc != 2; } re‐ turn 0; } This is because tab stops are related to the beginning of a paragraph rather than the beginning of an output line as one would expect. The desired behavior can be enabled with the request .linetabs, but this is groff-specific and not supported by other troffs. ~ onf
