At 2026-01-26T22:31:11+0100, Bruno Haible via GNU coreutils General Discussion wrote: > Your recent commit to man/date.x causes a "make distcheck" failure. > Reported by the CI. Namely: > > man/date.x:8:[\fI\,OPTION\/\fR]... > \fIMMDDhhmm\/\fR[[\fI\,CC\/\fR]\fI\,YY\/\fR][\fB.\fI\,ss\/\fR] > maint.mk: line(s) with more than 80 characters; reindent [...] > Possibly someone needs to customize the 'long_lines' syntax-check.
That is a remarkably ugly way to write *roff, and it doesn't have to be.
If you guys are interested in writing more attractive man(7) source,
consider me (and the groff_man_style(7) man page) a resource.
But to get over the immediate hump, bear in mind that you can use input
line continuation: backslash-newline.
groff_man_style(7):
Portability
...
\newline
Join the next input line to the current one. Except for
the update of the input line counter (used for diagnostic
messages and related purposes), a series of lines ending
in backslash‐newline appears to groff as a single input
line. Use this escape sequence to split excessively long
input lines for document maintenance.
I'll also point out that:
1. `\,` and `\/` are GNU troff extensions, and not portable to AT&T
troff, which matters if coreutils is portable to System V Unix
troff. (This is the case for Solaris 10.)
2. Ellipses are best spelled with `\|` escape sequences between their
dots. This escape sequence _is_ portable.
groff_man_style(7):
Portability
...
\| Thin space (one‐sixth em on typesetters, zero‐width on
terminals); a non‐breaking space. Used primarily in
ellipses (“.\|.\|.”) to space the dots more pleasantly on
typesetting devices like dvi, pdf, and ps.
3. If you rewrite synopses like the foregoing using font selection
macros rather than font selection escape sequences, you will get the
italic corrections of `\/` and `\,` for free when the troff
implementation on the host system is groff. You can be portable
_and_ enjoy better typesetting.
Regards,
Branden
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