Werner LEMBERG <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> Some other observations:
>
> . The proper way to write an ellipsis is `.\|.\|.\&', optionally
> starting with `\&'. Please don't omit the `\|' -- it looks quite
> ugly in PostScript output if the dots don't have enough horizontal
> separation.
OK. Do you think it's worth adding an ellipsis definition to an-ext.tmac?
> . Don't use real tabs in tables; use the `tab' keyword to substitute
> them with, say, `@'.
Can do. Is there any technical reason for this, other than the
"future editor settings could silently mess you up" I'm already aware
of?
> BTW, trailing and leading whitespace in tbl fields *do* matter and
> should be avoided in general. You need the `nospaces' keyword (a
> GNU extension) to make tbl ignore them.
And we need to avoid GNU extensions in this context. I hear you.
But I believe you may be worrying a bit too much here. I think trailing
whitespace, which I inserted at some points to make the table sources
more readable, could only mess up the rendering onder very strange
circumstances -- fonts scaled up too large and tabs set in a unit that
doesn't scale with font size.
Or do you know of some subtle trap that I don't?
> . If you use a table within a man page, the first line should be
>
> .\" t
>
> Similar key letters exist for refer and eqn. This is documented
> in the `groff_man' man page.
I was aware of this -- but last night when I tried to be a good
citizen and applied this first line to chem.man, it actually *broke*
the table rendering. I thought I'd fooed up something else, and spent
about fifteen puzzled minutes before I got it through my head that the
effect of .\" t was the reverse of what I expected and all I had to do
was remove it to get my table back (!).
One of my cleanup tasks for after I get the big stuff done is to
figure out why this happened.
(BTW, the list markup that I replaced with a table was a truly classic example
of the-author-should-be-hung-by-his-thumbs .TP abuse.)
> . I've further refined chem.man, using .SY/.YS within the man page
> also (this is, outside of the synopsis section) -- they are quite
> handy. Do you see problems if I do so?
No, not at all.
> . It's better to say
>
> .B "foo bar baz"
>
> instead of
>
> .B foo bar baz
>
> Reasons:
>
> (a) it's processed faster (no issue today, but...)
> (b) it works with old troff also (which has a limit of
> 9 macro arguments)
OK.
--
<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a>
