Date: Sun, 11 Nov 2001 08:50:02 -0800 (PST) From: "Kurt D. Zeilenga" <Kurt@OpenLDAP.org> To: freebsd-bugs@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: bin/31392: fmt(1) does format nroff source ... Message-ID: <200111111650.fABGo2405177@freefall.freebsd.org>
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The following reply was made to PR bin/31392; it has been noted by GNATS. From: "Kurt D. Zeilenga" <Kurt@OpenLDAP.org> To: charon@labs.gr Cc: freebsd-gnats-submit@FreeBSD.org, kurt@boolean.net Subject: Re: bin/31392: fmt(1) does format nroff source ... Date: Sun, 11 Nov 2001 08:41:32 -0800 At 07:11 PM 2001-11-10, charon@labs.gr wrote: >> Description >> >> fmt(1) provided with 4.4 does not recongize nroff directives >> and treats lines containing them as regular text. Previous >> versions previously recongized nroff directives and only >> formatted text outside of these directives. >> >> How-To-Repeat >> >> fmt <<EOF >> .ti 0 >> fmt should produce two lines, not one. >> EOF > >The rewrite of fmt(1) at revision 1.12 -> 1.13 of fmt.c behaves differently, >but this is not really a bug. I've been using fmt(1) to format [nt]roff files (such as man pages) for 20 years, fmt has behaved in a certain behavior manner. While you can argue all you want about which behavior is more 'correct' or more 'wrong', I argue that changing historical behavior is plain 'wrong' a very good technical reason. Where one does have good reason to introduce new behavior, it should be optional. Or, at least, the historical behavior is be available as an option. >The new fmt(1) tries to fill as much of the >input line as possible before sending it to the output stream, while the >former fmt(1) implementation copied '\n' to it's output unchanged, thus >keeping the lines that are shorter than the `goal length' to their original >length. > >I'm not sure if the original behavior was more `correct' or more `wrong' >in some sense, but this is definitely a change in behavior. I tested fmt >from RELENG_4_3_0_RELEASE today, and fmt of -CURRENT and they do behave >differently :-/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-bugs" in the body of the message
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