Re: add a character and a string definitions for an ellipsis

"G. Branden Robinson" <[email protected]> Thu, 12 Feb 2026 15:23:29 -0600
Newsgroups	gmane.comp.printing.groff.general
Message-ID	<20260212212329.dgqajgfg33f27hfs@illithid>
At 2026-02-12T21:10:37+0000, Bjarni Ingi Gislason wrote:
>   Seen in contrib/rfc1345.tmac as
> 
> .char \[,.] \[u2026]\"     HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS (Vim 8.0.0062)
> 
>   Seen in tmac/an.tmac as
> 
> .  ds an-ellipsis \|.\|.\|.\|\"
> 
>   Suggestions:
> 
>   Define as a fallback
> 
> .char \[,.] \|.\|.\|.\|
> 
>   or
> 
> .char \[,.] \&.\|.\|.
> 
>   Define as a short string
> 
> .ds El \|.\|.\|.\|\"
> 
>   or
> 
> .ds El \&.\|.\|.\"
> 
>   The string definition can be copied to the file that uses ellipsis,
> replacing '...'.
> 
> The width of UCS (Universal Character Set) 2026 is too short for my taste.
> 
> -.-
> 
>   Many examples of man pages in groff contain '.\|.\|.' with additional
> '\&' to ensure that the formatter interprets the string correctly.
> 
> -.-
> 
>   I found neither '\*(El' nor '\*[El' strings in my man[1-8] directories
> from Debian.
> So these are not common there.

I'm not enthusiastic about this.

1.  It's not portable.  Anyone opting into rfc1345.tmac usage is
    necessarily exercising groff extensions.

2.  groff_man_style(7), which I feel applies generally:

     • Why doesn’t the package provide a string to insert an ellipsis?

       Examples of ellipsis usage are shown above, in subsection
       “Synopsis macros”.  The idiomatic roff ellipsis is three dots
       (periods) with thin space escape sequences \| internally
       separating them.  Since dots both begin control lines and are
       candidate end‐of‐sentence characters, however, it is sometimes
       necessary to prefix and/or suffix an ellipsis with the dummy
       character escape sequence \&.  That fact stands even if a string
       is defined to contain the sequence; further, if the string ends
       with \&, end‐of‐sentence detection is defeated when you use the
       string at the end of an actual sentence.  (Ending a sentence with
       an ellipsis is often poor style, but not always.)  A hypothetical
       string EL that contained an ellipsis, but not the trailing dummy
       character \&, would then need to be suffixed with the latter when
       not ending a sentence.

           Instead of...              ...do this.
       ──────────────────────────────────────────────────
       .ds EL \&.\|.\|.         Arguments are
       Arguments are            .IR src‐file\~ .\|.\|.\&
       .IR src‐file\~ \*(EL\&   .IR dest‐dir .
       .IR dest‐dir .
       ──────────────────────────────────────────────────

       The first column practices a false economy; the savings in typing
       is offset by the cost of obscuring even the suggestion of an
       ellipsis to a casual reader of the source document, and reduced
       portability to non‐roff man page formatters that cannot handle
       string definitions.

       Unicode defines an ellipsis code point, and some fonts have an
       ellipsis glyph, which some man pages have accessed non‐portably
       with the font‐dependent \N escape sequence.  We discourage their
       use; on terminals, they may crowd the dots into a half‐width
       character cell, and do not render at all if the output device
       lacks the glyph.  In synopses, missing ellipses can mislead the
       reader.  Dots and space are universally supported.
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