At 2025-01-21T22:31:44+0100, onf wrote:
> On Tue Jan 21, 2025 at 8:29 PM CET, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> > Yeah, but I won't have to go sticking my hand into unfamiliar places
> > in the formatter, and we get to keep the output language
> > ASCII-simple.
> 
> You could have said that upfront instead of trying to argue that it
> would make the output harder to read for some people.

You've tricked me into revealing my subterfuge--I see I'm not alone in
possessing psychic powers!

I would have assumed that a serious-minded person such as yourself would
not presume that I either felt I had total mastery of groff's code base,
nor that I claimed to.

In fact I've openly discussed gaps in my knowledge and deficiencies in
my understanding many times on this list.  But, you seem to be
relatively new here, and possibly did not lurk long before posting.
Well, now you know.

> Given how difficult adding full Unicode support to groff, and
> contributing to the formatter in general, seems to be, I think a more
> likely scenario might be that I patch neatroff to support all the
> groff extensions I rely on, and switch to it instead.[1]

If you find Ali and his work a less seductive target for your
derogations, that outcome might be a Pareto improvement.

> I maintain my own macros for most things anyway...

Not for writing man pages, I trust.  The almost-perfect vehicle already
exists!

> I've come to understand that it's in order of usage: most have neither
> prefix nor postfix, some have postfix, and even less also have a
> prefix.

Yes, that is precisely the order of their historical development, as
explained in groff's ms.ms document for a few years now.

ms.ms:

[this formats wide due to a troublesome table I haven't dealt with yet]

5.5.  Typeface and decoration

The  ms macros provide a variety of ways to style text.  Attend closely to the 
ordering
of arguments labeled pre and post, which is not intuitive.  Support for  pre  
arguments
is a GNU extension.[3]
[...]
  [3] This  idiosyncrasy  arose  through feature accretion; for example, the B 
macro in
Sixth Edition Unix ms (1975) accepted  only  one  argument,  the  text  to  be  
set  in
boldface.  By Version 7 (1979) it recognized a second argument; in 1990, groff 
ms added
a “pre” argument, placing it third to avoid breaking support for older 
documents.

> It's harder to read when you need all three, though.

Possibly a failure of imagination on Lesk's part, or maybe an
overestimation of users' comfort level with `\c`.

Regards,
Branden

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