[PATCH 06/31] docs: use `EX`/`EE` calls for monospaced examples

"G. Branden Robinson" <[email protected]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 17:58:00 -0500
Newsgroups	gmane.editors.nano.devel
Message-ID	<20260423225800.w67keh7i3nifyc73@illithid>
Employing these macros has two advantages.

1.  There's no need to manually specify line breaks with the `br`
    request.

2.  They use a monospaced typeface on devices that support changing the
    font family.

Also remove boldfacing from displayed examples; it's unnecessary in my
opinion, since the examples are already distinguished by being
displayed, due to their indentation and surrounding vertical space.

Also drop unnecessary `P` macro call immediately preceding a sectioning
macro call in nanorc(5).

Also since an example line no longer uses a macro call, we don't need to
specify three double quotes """ in a row to get just one.

groff_man(7):
   Document structure macros
...
     .EX
     .EE    Begin and end example.  After EX, filling is disabled (and,
            on typesetters, a monospaced font family is selected).
            Calling EE enables filling (and restores the previous
            family).

            Ninth Edition Unix introduced the EX and EE extensions.
            Documenter’s Workbench (DWB), Heirloom Doctools, and Plan 9
            troffs, and mandoc (since 1.12.2) support them.  Solaris
            troff does not.

If nano supports deployment on System V Unix hosts, there is a remedy,
but even Solaris, as of version 11, uses groff for man page rendering.
Other System V Unices seem to be end-of-lifed and/or have had groff
ported to them (specifically, HP-UX and AIX).

groff_man_style(7):
   Use of extensions
     To ensure that your man page formats reliably on a wide variety of
     viewers, write it solely with the macros described in this page
     (except for the ones identified as deprecated, which you should
     avoid).  Macros described as extensions might be unsupported by a
     formatter that is important to your audience.  Nevertheless,
     groff’s extensions are present because they perform tasks that are
     otherwise difficult or tedious to achieve portably.  If you require
     an extension but expect your man page to be rendered on a system
     that doesn’t support it, write a configuration test to measure a
     property of the system, and use m4(1), sed(1), or a similar tool to
     generate a .man file from a .man.in file, defining page‐local
     versions of extension macros only where necessary.  You can copy
     extension macro definitions from groff; see an-ext.tmac in section
     “Files” below.
...
     /usr/local/share/groff/1.24.1/tmac/an-ext.tmac
            Definitions of macros described above as extensions (and not
            deprecated) are contained in this file; in some cases, they
            are simpler versions of definitions appearing in an.tmac,
            and are ignored if the formatter is GNU troff.  They are
            written to be compatible with AT&T troff and permissively
            licensed——not copylefted.  To reduce the risk of name space
            collisions, string and register names begin only with “m”.
            We encourage man page authors who are concerned about
            portability to legacy Unix systems to copy these definitions
            into their pages, and maintainers of troff implementations
            or work‐alike systems that format man pages to re‐use them.
            To ensure reliable rendering, define them after your page
            calls TH; see the discussion of andoc.tmac above.  Further,
            it is wise to define such page‐local macros (if at all)
            after the “Name” section to accommodate timid makewhatis(8)
            or mandb(8) implementations that easily give up scanning for
            indexing material.
---
 doc/nano.1   | 25 ++++++++++++++-----------
 doc/nanorc.5 | 30 ++++++++++++++++--------------
 2 files changed, 30 insertions(+), 25 deletions(-)

diff --git a/doc/nano.1 b/doc/nano.1
index 18acf61f..cfdff8af 100644
--- a/doc/nano.1
+++ b/doc/nano.1
@@ -42,9 +42,10 @@ .SH NOTICES
 add these two lines at the end of your \fInanorc\fR file:
 .P
 .RS 4
-.B bind M\-< prevbuf main
-.br
-.B bind M\-> nextbuf main
+.EX
+bind M\-< prevbuf main
+bind M\-> nextbuf main
+.EE
 .RE
 .P
 Since version 8.0, to be newcomer friendly, \fB^F\fR starts a forward search,
@@ -54,13 +55,12 @@ .SH NOTICES
 four lines at the end of your \fInanorc\fR file:
 .P
 .RS 4
-.B bind ^F forward main
-.br
-.B bind ^B back main
-.br
-.B bind M\-F formatter main
-.br
-.B bind M\-B linter main
+.EX
+bind ^F forward main
+bind ^B back main
+bind M\-F formatter main
+bind M\-B linter main
+.EE
 .RE
 .P
 .
@@ -85,7 +85,10 @@ .SH DESCRIPTION
 the first occurrence of the word "Foo", you would do:
 .P
 .RS 4
-.BI "nano +c/Foo " file
+.EX
+nano +c/Foo \c
+.I file
+.EE
 .RE
 .P
 As a special case: if instead of a filename a dash (\fB\-\fR) is given,
diff --git a/doc/nanorc.5 b/doc/nanorc.5
index 4afa99d4..eef5bced 100644
--- a/doc/nanorc.5
+++ b/doc/nanorc.5
@@ -46,9 +46,10 @@ .SH NOTICES
 add these two lines at the end of your \fInanorc\fR file:
 .P
 .RS 4
-.B bind M\-< prevbuf main
-.br
-.B bind M\-> nextbuf main
+.EX
+bind M\-< prevbuf main
+bind M\-> nextbuf main
+.EE
 .RE
 .P
 Since version 8.0, to be newcomer friendly, \fB^F\fR starts a forward search,
@@ -58,15 +59,13 @@ .SH NOTICES
 four lines at the end of your \fInanorc\fR file:
 .P
 .RS 4
-.B bind ^F forward main
-.br
-.B bind ^B back main
-.br
-.B bind M\-F formatter main
-.br
-.B bind M\-B linter main
+.EX
+bind ^F forward main
+bind ^B back main
+bind M\-F formatter main
+bind M\-B linter main
+.EE
 .RE
-.P
 .
 .SH OPTIONS
 The configuration file accepts a series of \fBset\fR and \fBunset\fR
@@ -1117,15 +1116,18 @@ .SH EXAMPLES
 To make \fBCtrl+Z\fR suspend nano:
 .P
 .RS
-.B bind ^Z suspend main
+.EX
+bind ^Z suspend main
+.EE
 .RE
 .P
 To make \fBShift+Alt+C\fR copy the marked region to the system's clipboard:
 .P
 .RS
-.B bind Sh\-M\-C """{execute}| xsel \-ib {enter}{undo}""" main
+.EX
+bind Sh\-M\-C "{execute}| xsel \-ib {enter}{undo}" main
+.EE
 .RE
-.P
 .
 .SH FILES
 .TP
-- 
2.30.2
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