Re: Should temporary indentation be ignored when centering?

[G. Branden Robinson]

Hi Damian,

At 2023-06-05T13:02:14+1000, Damian McGuckin wrote:
> Thanks. I agree that the incorrect statement should be deleted.
> 
> On Sat, 3 Jun 2023, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> 
> > What is your use case for employing temporary indentation while
> > centering?
> 
> It;s probably a bit abnormal but it is not wrong.  Weird maybe. I have
> used it that way once or twice in a decade. But normally I use a '-mm'
> display (.DS) so it never affects me. That said, I have a '.ti' in my
> letterhead (but not within a centered block) so I use '.ti' every day.
> 
> Note: a negative '.ti' says go the left of the margin and so is a
> NO-OP.

Not true in general.

$ nl EXPERIMENTS/in-and-ti.roff
     1  .nf
     2  .in 10n
     3  Hello, world!
     4  .ti -5n
     5  Let's back up.
     6  .ti -5n
     7  The same amount.
     8  .ti -10n
     9  Now all the way.
    10  .ti -15n
    11  Whoops, too far!
    12  .in -10n
    13  We're done with temporary solutions.
$ nroff -Tascii -ww EXPERIMENTS/in-and-ti.roff|cat -s
troff: EXPERIMENTS/in-and-ti.roff:10: warning: total indent cannot be negative
          Hello,world!
     Let's back up.
     The same amount.
Now all the way.
Whoops, too far!
We're done with temporary solutions.

> I think if groff handles '.ti' within a '.ce' sequence in a certain
> way, and others like heirloom troff do it the same way, keep the
> behaviour. No point is fixing a bug that does not exist. Your valuable
> time is better spent fixing real bugs. Yes, the fact that you have to
> double the argument '.ti' to get what you want, that is a bug. But it
> is a consistent bug, so why worry. Maybe that needs documentation. I
> must admit that I have always played with the indentation amount to
> get the right affect so I probably never really noticed.  It is a bit
> like spaces in 'eqn', tweak until OK.

I'm pretty skeptical...but OK.  How about a style warning to be thrown
on the pile in <https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/index.php?62776>?

Regards,
Branden

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