Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2001 11:23:25 +0200 From: Ruslan Ermilov <ru@FreeBSD.ORG> To: "Gary W. Swearingen" <swear@blarg.net> Cc: freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: docs/32676: file(1) formatting nit Message-ID: <20011213112325.H77774@sunbay.com> In-Reply-To: <rs7krsdwam.krs@localhost.localdomain> References: <200112120810.fBC8A2S55924@freefall.freebsd.org> <rs7krsdwam.krs@localhost.localdomain>
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On Wed, Dec 12, 2001 at 12:21:21PM -0800, Gary W. Swearingen wrote: > > > > > 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). > Output width information is hard-coded into mdoc(7) and constitues 78 characters for nroff(1) and 6.5 inches for troff(1). > 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. > I'll look into making literal displays still wrap their lines. Interesting, how many manpages will break. Will see... Cheers, -- Ruslan Ermilov Oracle Developer/DBA, ru@sunbay.com Sunbay Software AG, ru@FreeBSD.org FreeBSD committer, +380.652.512.251 Simferopol, Ukraine http://www.FreeBSD.org The Power To Serve http://www.oracle.com Enabling The Information Age To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message
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