On Tue Jan 21, 2025 at 11:39 PM CET, G. Branden Robinson wrote: > At 2025-01-21T22:31:44+0100, onf wrote: > > On Tue Jan 21, 2025 at 8:29 PM CET, G. Branden Robinson wrote: > > > Yeah, but I won't have to go sticking my hand into unfamiliar places > > > in the formatter, and we get to keep the output language > > > ASCII-simple. > > > > You could have said that upfront instead of trying to argue that it > > would make the output harder to read for some people. > > You've tricked me into revealing my subterfuge--I see I'm not alone in > possessing psychic powers! > > I would have assumed that a serious-minded person such as yourself would > not presume that I either felt I had total mastery of groff's code base, > nor that I claimed to. > > In fact I've openly discussed gaps in my knowledge and deficiencies in > my understanding many times on this list. [...]
I know that you mentioned not completely understanding the codebase in the past, but if your gaps in this area are so large that it makes you opposed to an otherwise completely reasonable change, I would expect you to be upfront about it. > > Given how difficult adding full Unicode support to groff, and > > contributing to the formatter in general, seems to be, I think a more > > likely scenario might be that I patch neatroff to support all the > > groff extensions I rely on, and switch to it instead.[1] > > If you find Ali and his work a less seductive target for your > derogations, that outcome might be a Pareto improvement. Could you write that in plain English? > > I maintain my own macros for most things anyway... > > Not for writing man pages, I trust. The almost-perfect vehicle already > exists! You know damn well how senseless it would be to write one's own macros for manpages, so save your sarcasm to yourself. > > I've come to understand that it's in order of usage: most have neither > > prefix nor postfix, some have postfix, and even less also have a > > prefix. > > Yes, that is precisely the order of their historical development, as > explained in groff's ms.ms document for a few years now. > [...] > Support for pre arguments is a GNU extension.[3] > [...] > > It's harder to read when you need all three, though. > > Possibly a failure of imagination on Lesk's part, or maybe an > overestimation of users' comfort level with `\c`. I was actually talking about this argument ordering in general. The Mk macros, for instance, use it as well despite supporting both prefix and postfix from the beginning. ~ onf
