a point of curiosity about ncurses man pages

[G. Branden Robinson]

Hi Thomas,

Definitely a low priority item, nothing like the issue Sam James found.

I noticed some changes in this week's snapshot.

@@ -64,7 +64,7 @@ .SH DESCRIPTION
 every visible line we might number
 .I i
 becomes line
-.IR i \-1.
+.IR i "\-1."
 The text of the top line in the window disappears and the bottom line
 is populated with blank characters;
 see \fB\%bkgd\fP(3X) or \fB\%bkgrnd\fP(3X).

@@ -419,7 +419,7 @@ .SS "Formatting Output"
 Its numeric parameters are
 .IR int s
 rather than
-.IR long s.
+.IR long "s."
 .PP
 Both \fB\%tparm\fP and \fB\%tiparm\fP assume that the application passes
 parameters consistent with the terminal description.

@@ -540,7 +540,7 @@ .SS "Function Name Index"
 man pages that describe them.
 Those flagged with \*(``*\*(''
 are
-.IR \%ncurses -specific,
+.IR \%ncurses "-specific,"
 neither described by X/Open Curses nor present in SVr4.
 .PP
 .TS

I was wondering what *roff implementation you were using that made
quotation of macro arguments necessary here.  I don't know of any, and
if you do, I will have to update groff's documentation with respect to
portability advice.

To the best of my knowledge, in all *roffs everywhere, arguments in
macro calls are separated by (unescaped) spaces and nothing else, except
in Plan 9 troff, where tab characters are also treated as argument
separators (and groff documents this).

There was also the following, which corrected an error of mine--thanks!

@@ -325,7 +325,7 @@ .SS Overview
 See \fB\%getch\fP(3X).
 .PP
 .I \%ncurses
-provides reimplementations of the SVr4 \fBpanel\fP(3), \fBform\fP(3),
+provides reimplementations of the SVr4 \fBpanel\fP(3X), \fBform\fP(3X),
 and \fBmenu\fP(3X) libraries to ease construction of user interfaces
 with
 .IR curses .

Regards,
Branden

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