At 2026-02-12T21:10:37+0000, Bjarni Ingi Gislason wrote: > Seen in contrib/rfc1345.tmac as > > .char \[,.] \[u2026]\" HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS (Vim 8.0.0062) > > Seen in tmac/an.tmac as > > . ds an-ellipsis \|.\|.\|.\|\" > > Suggestions: > > Define as a fallback > > .char \[,.] \|.\|.\|.\| > > or > > .char \[,.] \&.\|.\|. > > Define as a short string > > .ds El \|.\|.\|.\|\" > > or > > .ds El \&.\|.\|.\" > > The string definition can be copied to the file that uses ellipsis, > replacing '...'. > > The width of UCS (Universal Character Set) 2026 is too short for my taste. > > -.- > > Many examples of man pages in groff contain '.\|.\|.' with additional > '\&' to ensure that the formatter interprets the string correctly. > > -.- > > I found neither '\*(El' nor '\*[El' strings in my man[1-8] directories > from Debian. > So these are not common there.
I'm not enthusiastic about this.
1. It's not portable. Anyone opting into rfc1345.tmac usage is
necessarily exercising groff extensions.
2. groff_man_style(7), which I feel applies generally:
• Why doesn’t the package provide a string to insert an ellipsis?
Examples of ellipsis usage are shown above, in subsection
“Synopsis macros”. The idiomatic roff ellipsis is three dots
(periods) with thin space escape sequences \| internally
separating them. Since dots both begin control lines and are
candidate end‐of‐sentence characters, however, it is sometimes
necessary to prefix and/or suffix an ellipsis with the dummy
character escape sequence \&. That fact stands even if a string
is defined to contain the sequence; further, if the string ends
with \&, end‐of‐sentence detection is defeated when you use the
string at the end of an actual sentence. (Ending a sentence with
an ellipsis is often poor style, but not always.) A hypothetical
string EL that contained an ellipsis, but not the trailing dummy
character \&, would then need to be suffixed with the latter when
not ending a sentence.
Instead of... ...do this.
──────────────────────────────────────────────────
.ds EL \&.\|.\|. Arguments are
Arguments are .IR src‐file\~ .\|.\|.\&
.IR src‐file\~ \*(EL\& .IR dest‐dir .
.IR dest‐dir .
──────────────────────────────────────────────────
The first column practices a false economy; the savings in typing
is offset by the cost of obscuring even the suggestion of an
ellipsis to a casual reader of the source document, and reduced
portability to non‐roff man page formatters that cannot handle
string definitions.
Unicode defines an ellipsis code point, and some fonts have an
ellipsis glyph, which some man pages have accessed non‐portably
with the font‐dependent \N escape sequence. We discourage their
use; on terminals, they may crowd the dots into a half‐width
character cell, and do not render at all if the output device
lacks the glyph. In synopses, missing ellipses can mislead the
reader. Dots and space are universally supported.
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