Hi Branden - thanks much for all the info.
My remaining question is: does "\f(CW" cause a warning with current
groff? (Sorry, it's not something I can easily test.) And if it does,
what should I use? Or is there in fact no way whatsoever to get inline
typewriter in man pages without (now) a warning? That would be a bad
outcome.
I don't need perfect portability. I just need something that works with
GNU groff without complaint. .EX/.EE are good, but not all typewriter is
displayed.
I have a few more general comments. Sorry for my persistence. Feel free
to ignore all this.
versions of groff weren't able to "select font 'C'" either,
The output from \fC was/is typewriter. So the right thing happened.
is that the formatter cannot honor the request that is being made of it.
No font "C" exists to select.
I understand. But maybe you could define it, instead of trying to stamp
it out. It has a clear meaning and has worked for decades for many
people.
(1) it never accomplishes anything on any terminal device anywhere and
Sure. But it also doesn't hurt anything. Selecting a monospace font is a
harmless no-op for terminals.
because there is no such thing as a portable font name in *roff,
If it works in groff, that's good enough for a huge proportion of roff
users nowadays (including me). Many people in many situations do not
need perfect portability. E.g., I have no problem telling people that
man pages in TeX Live should be processed with groff.
There is no completely portable way to select a monospaced typeface when
using the man(7) macros. The package was not designed to do so,
I understand, but it would nevertheless be useful if it was ameliorated.
Typewriter is one of the things most needed in man pages. And I believe
man pages are a significant proportion of all roff use, nowadays.
original troff (Ossanna troff)
Yes, I'm aware of (t)roff history and why it was defined as it was in
the 1970s, for the C/A/T typesetter at Bell Labs, which didn't have a
place to "mount" Courier. But it seems like GNU groff doesn't need to be
limited by that, some 50 years later.
Do you think it would help if I added the foregoing paragraph to to
the "Notes" section of groff_man_style(7), given that is serves as a
kind of "man FAQ"?
Yes. Any specific information about this question would be helpful,
IMHO. Also in groff_man_style and/or man(7), especially in that section
describing .EX/.EE. Anyone reading that will, more than likely, want to
know about non-displayed typewriter too.
My goal in improving groff's diagnostic messages (and increasing the
variety of them) is not to make people jump through hoops but to enable
I understand, and agree that it's a laudable goal in general. However,
the end result in this case does turn out to be making me "jump through
hoops" because, as you've seen, as soon as there is a warning, it gets
reported, and since I don't want to receive a stream of warnings from
multiple people over multiple years, I have to fix it. Even though this
man page has rendered perfectly well for decades. If the man page had
rendered incorrectly, I wouldn't be complaining ...
Changing options or envvars or processing doesn't really help, because
the reports always come from people who use their own build environments.
groff's Texinfo manual does not cover macro packages, preprocessors, or
output drivers in detail, except for the "ms" package [0]
I see. It feels unfortunate, since, as I mention above, I believe man
pages are a primary use of roff. Indeed, it never occurred to me that
man pages would *not* be covered in the groff manual. (I guess it should
have been obvious to me, but, as usual, I was just looking for an answer
to my particular question, not reading the background or looking at the
overall document.)
Anyway, since I gather you have no desire to expand the manual to cover
the man macros (and I can understand why), maybe a brief list of common
macro packages and where to find their documentation somewhere near the
beginning of groff.texi? I had never heard of groff_man_style(7) before
you mentioned it. In fact, it does not exist on my computer. I guess it
was created in a newer release than what I currently have.
Thanks again for the exhaustive reply and all your work on groff.
karl
