From owner-freebsd-doc  Sun Aug 29  7: 0:39 1999
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Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 14:30:00 +0100
From: Nik Clayton <nik@freebsd.org>
To: Mike Pritchard <mpp@FreeBSD.org>
Cc: Alexey Zelkin <phantom@cris.net>, freebsd-doc@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Propose mdoc fix regarding ERRORS section
Message-ID: <19990829143000.E75050@catkin.nothing-going-on.org>
References: <19990828212130.A6853@scorpion.crimea.ua> <199908282135.QAA00714@mpp.pro-ns.net>
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On Sat, Aug 28, 1999 at 04:35:15PM -0500, Mike Pritchard wrote:
> > On Sat, Aug 28, 1999 at 02:29:08AM -0500, Mike Pritchard wrote:
> > > 
> > > I propose that we fix mdoc to allocate enough width when the second
> > > form is specified, and then change all of the man pages to use that
> > > format in the ERRORS section.
> 
> > I think second way is better. I am going to remake my patch.
> > As first step I did this patch. I used 15 because error name EADDRNOTAVAIL
> > is longest error name I've found. (yes, I know that length is
> > 13, but we also need some space between columns) 
> 
> The longest errno's are 15 characters in lenght (EPROTONOSUPPORT),
> so Er should use width 17.  I'll format some man pages using this
> and see how they look.

Chaps, in all this, are we actually sure that the change is necessary?

This is quite a big change to ensure that things like

    ...
    [EBADF]         D is not a valid file or socket descriptor open 
                    for reading.

    [EFAULT]        Buf points outside the allocated address space.

    [EWORLDCOLLAPSINGAROUNDYOU]
                    
                    The world is collapsing around your ears.  Run for
                    the hills.
    ...

don't occur.  And presumably we would need to redo this change every 
time a longer error message is introduced.

Is the last example above (where the error value forces the description
down a line or too) so horrible that we need to 'fix' it?  I don't 
really care (and I don't have to do any of the work :-) ) but it does
strike me as being quite a big change for a small amount of visible
effect.

N
-- 
 [intentional self-reference] can be easily accommodated using a blessed,
 non-self-referential dummy head-node whose own object destructor severs
 the links.
    -- Tom Christiansen in <375143b5@cs.colorado.edu>


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