Hi Branden, G. Branden Robinson wrote on Sun, Dec 16, 2018 at 01:33:43PM -0500: > At 2018-12-16T17:15:47+0100, Ingo Schwarze wrote:
>> So i don't regard it as a big mystery how the rule "put all caps >> into the source code for section headers" came to be. The question >> only is whether it is worth editing thousands of manual pages for >> each operating system to get rid of the rule now. > I think that is a false dilemma; between changing everything and > changing nothing. I don't think that's a good description of the question. The question is whether to change a recommendation. Somebody who would issue a recommendation and then refuse to follow it himself would look like a hypocrite to me. > Since we don't have power over all the man pages in existence, Well, we do have power over the OpenBSD pages (assuming we can agree with Jason), and i know the manual page maintainers in FreeBSD and NetBSD (not just via email), i met them in person several times. I guess soembody here will probably know Michael Kerrisk, too. > it's easy to predict how such a dilemma gets decided. Starting with the above list of people is likely to have quite some impact in the medium term if we dacide it's worth it. > It's my intention to downcase man page names (.TH) and section > headings (.SH)[1] in groff after 1.22.4 is released. Wait. Unless our goal is to make that the long-term goal for all well-maintained manual pages, groff shouldn't change either but adhere to the long-standing practice, or we merely cause divergence in the ecosystem and decreased coherence for users. > Cognizant of conservative attitudes, I'm of course willing to do the > work to support the transformation of these items back into shouting > capitals at the macro package level. That's the trivial part, causing negligible work. Besides, arguably, that should even be done if we do *not* change the recommendation - amybe even more so in that case. Yours, Ingo
