URL:
<https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?65344>
Summary: want a more limited no-space mode
Group: GNU roff
Submitter: barx
Submitted: Thu 22 Feb 2024 05:10:25 AM CST
Category: Core
Severity: 1 - Wish
Item Group: Feature change
Status: None
Privacy: Public
Assigned to: None
Open/Closed: Open
Discussion Lock: Any
Planned Release: None
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Follow-up Comments:
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Date: Thu 22 Feb 2024 05:10:25 AM CST By: Dave <barx>
When I posted this idea on the email list
(http://lists.gnu.org/r/groff/2024-01/msg00119.html), Branden had some
implementation concerns (http://lists.gnu.org/r/groff/2024-02/msg00014.html),
but no one shot down the concept, so I submit it here to be formally accepted
or rejected.
Having no-space mode suppress .bp seems quirky, and at odds with the info
manual's stated use case for the mode: "A paragraphing macro might ordinarily
insert vertical space to separate paragraphs. A section heading macro could
invoke 'ns' to suppress this spacing for the first paragraph in a section."
(CSTR #54, befitting its terser nature, suggests no usage for .ns.)
Of course this long-historical behavior cannot be overturned. However, two
ideas were floated in the email thread to get the sometimes-desired "no-space
mode that honors bp" (which hopefully someone will coin a less clunky name
for):
* .ns currently takes no arguments -- but it could, a value to specify
"suppress only vertical space, but not page breaks." The behavior with no
argument would be unchanged, so historical usage would work as it always has.
* There could be a new, alternate no-space-mode request, perhaps named .ns1.
A real-world problem this can solve is the -ms package's handling of vertical
space after displays; see earlier posts in the first email-list thread cited
above.
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