Re: Inconsistent macro notation in manual pages.

"G. Branden Robinson" <[email protected]> Tue, 21 Apr 2026 23:40:21 -0500

Newsgroups	gmane.comp.printing.groff.general
Message-ID	<20260422044021.bhn5o3xdao62rsfq@illithid>

Hi Morten,

At 2026-02-22T11:00:37-0600, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> At 2026-02-22T13:09:24+0100, Morten Bo Johansen wrote:
> > On 2026-02-22 dvalin--- via GNU roff typesetting system discussion
> > wrote:
> > > Excessive consistency can sometimes reduce utility, in my
> > > experience.
> 
> > But the bottom line here is that the macro description for e.g. the
> > .AU macro in groff_ms looks like this:
> > 
> >     .AU    Specify an author’s name.  ms collects text on input
> >            lines (...)
> > 
> > and in groff_mm, for an identically named macro, it looks like this:
> > 
> >      AU [name [initials [loc [dept [ext [room [arg1 [arg2
> >         [arg3]]]]]]]]]
> >              Specify author
> > 
> > This is just plain inconsistent in a non-excusable way.
> 
> I largely agree.  I'm not happy with it.

With the release done I've had a chance to come back to this issue.

What do you think of the following commit as a pilot for a similar
change that could be made to the groff_mm(7) page?

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff-commit/2026-04/msg00282.html

I refer specifically to this part:

"We prefix macro names..."

Of course, the paragraph tags in groff_mm(7) would have to be updated as
well to make the statement true.

Regards,
Branden

signature.asc (application/pgp-signature, 833 B)