From owner-freebsd-doc Wed Dec 12 12:22:18 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Received: from lists.blarg.net (lists.blarg.net [206.124.128.17]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C435E37B416; Wed, 12 Dec 2001 12:22:14 -0800 (PST) Received: from thig.blarg.net (thig.blarg.net [206.124.128.18]) by lists.blarg.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id BCB23BEC1; Wed, 12 Dec 2001 12:22:13 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost.localdomain ([206.124.139.115]) by thig.blarg.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id MAA18228; Wed, 12 Dec 2001 12:22:13 -0800 Received: (from jojo@localhost) by localhost.localdomain (8.11.6/8.11.3) id fBCKLLQ25056; Wed, 12 Dec 2001 12:21:21 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from swear@blarg.net) To: Ruslan Ermilov Cc: freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: docs/32676: file(1) formatting nit References: <200112120810.fBC8A2S55924@freefall.freebsd.org> From: swear@blarg.net (Gary W. Swearingen) Date: 12 Dec 2001 12:21:21 -0800 In-Reply-To: <200112120810.fBC8A2S55924@freefall.freebsd.org> Message-ID: Lines: 20 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0808 (Gnus v5.8.8) XEmacs/21.1 (Cuyahoga Valley) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org > > > Starting lines with a space is bogus, and causes groff(1) > to stop formatting the current line. There's nothing wrong > with some text running of a right margin; manpages display > "literal" text exactly as it is shown by a program, and the > output of man(1) could be controlled by a pager utility > like more(1) or less(1). There IS something wrong: pager utilities can't know where the left margin is (without some AI code) with resulting ugly and hard-to-read line wrapping and occasional trunctation of text (as I observe in XEmacs's man file(1) with a 80-column X window). Man pages should have a convention to represent the end(s) of wrapped literal lines. Something like "[\]" or "[NL]" or "[wrap]" at the end or "[+]" or "[cont]" at the beginning. I've always preferred the beginning (ala FORTRAN), but on Unix the end is more common. But there's not enough literal stuff in man pages to spend much time worrying about it. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message