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
