Follow-up Comment #1, bug #67456 (group groff):
At 2025-08-24T17:57:36-0400, Bjarni Ingi Gislason wrote:
> File: man/groff.7.man
>
> In chapter "Control structures", fourth paragraph:
>
> "\} should appear on a line with other occurrences of itself as necessary
> to match \{ sequences."
>
> With '\}\}..." the end of a structure (with indentation) is not clearly
> visible.
>
> A better practice is to have each "end of a block" on its own line,
> like:
>
> . \}
> . \}
> .\}
>
> matching the beginning of each corresponding block of text.
I believe the intention of the language here was to prevent people from
supposing that they could mix close-brace escape sequences with
arbitrary tokens on an input line.
Historically, this was done in AT&T/DWB troff and can still be seen in
Plan 9 from User Space today. Here's a modest sample.
src/cmd/mpm/tmac.pm:68:.sp \\$1\}
src/cmd/mpm/tmac.pm:143:. fp 4 PX\}
src/cmd/mpm/tmac.pm:149:. fp 4 NX CentBI\}
src/cmd/mpm/tmac.pm:154:. fp 4 NX\}\}
As noted elsewhere in the manual, such aggressive economy does not work
well with the `while` request.
At the same time, I don't want to be overprescriptive; the manual should
document what is allowed, and _suggest_ best practices where known and
of sufficient merit.
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