RE: [Groff] groff_man.man revised -- Fast Reply

[Freudenberger Joerg]

Dear Werner,
dear friends,

I compare with man(5) of SunOS 5.4 aka Solaris 2.4.

( Remark: the differences are taken of the man page,
the are not tested. And I don't imply any recommandation. 
It's just that commercial UNIX of that I got a man page
about the man pages. The printed docs of the dead versions
(You may prefer to read: the ancient versions of UNIX)
I got doesn't provide this )


1. That implementation doesn't provide OPTIONS. 
        { I've ever missed double-sided printing }

2. All macros which having text arguments
accept zero to six (troff-)words. 
If one of the following 
( .B .BI .BR .I .IB .IR. .RB .RI .SM .SS [.R isn't listed ])
has no arg it uses the next text line.

3. "prevailing indent" is remembered as long as not a new 
indent value is set.  indent macros are ( .HP .IP .RS .TP ).
.RE has no argument.

4. The "Text Header" macro ( .TH ) is defined with 5 arguments
        $1 Title
        $2 Section
        $3 (optional) Date of the most recent change
        $4 (optional) left page footer
        $5 (optional) main page header (center of headline)

5. The following requests cause a break:
.HP .IP .LP .P .PP .RE .RS .SH .SS .TH .TP 

6. It predefines only \*R and \*S.

7. It contains a very short tbl example for the man(1) preprocessing
This is excerpted from man(1):
If the first line is 
        '\" <word>
the input is processed by the corresponding preprocessor. 
Mind the single Space. <word> contains e for eqn, r for refer
t for tbl and v for vgrind.

8. Two Macros ( .IX .TX ) are additionaly defined. The first ist 
an index macro mark as for SunSoft internal use. The later 
is explained as resolving title abbreviation. IMHO only
for internal interest 

//
The Sun Man Page give only shorthand technical discription, but
much more semantic and formal advise.

Comparing the both macro packets on source code level needs more 
troff expirience than I have. 

//
May we get Trent's request list into the distribution ?

Yours
        Jörg

P.S: I have not yet restarted working on the white paper.
        My Computer at home had an installation chrash.