Re: on the need for better quotation in man(7) (was: names of ISO 8859 encodings)

[Alejandro Colomar]

Hi Branden, Dave,

On Sun, Dec 15, 2024 at 11:30:27PM -0600, Dave Kemper wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 14, 2024 at 12:02 PM G. Branden Robinson
> <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> wrote:
> >     This is likely due for a cleaned up re-proposal under the new names
> >     `QS`/`QE` as suggested by Doug McIlroy.

I still don't know what to expect of those macros.  Could you please
send some examples of what you have in mind?

> 
> Man pages using these proposed macros--which, since the macros don't
> exist yet, will be man pages edited in 2025 or later--will surely
> never be formatted by a roff that's limited to two-character
> identifiers.  Do other man-parsing tools expect all macros to be two
> characters or less?  Or, as the man language is selectively expanded,
> can its new macros be given human-meaningful names?

I think for consistency sticking to the short format is a good thing,
unless at some point we find we need longer ones (but that would be a
good point for saying we have enough macros in man(7) that the language
is too fat).  For me, QS is readable enough (I do like 'p' as a
temporary variable for a pointer, though; your opinion may vary.)

Have a lovely day!
Alex

-- 
<https://www.alejandro-colomar.es/>

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