Package: groff-base Version: 1.22.4-6 Severity: normal Dear Maintainer,
The weird spacing on Pqs when compared to ()s has always bugged me, but now it's bugged me so hard I decided to look. You may have noticed that, for example, (ibid) is rendered differently from .Pq ibid It's very obvious when you have both styles stacked together, or even when you compare stacking punctuation at the end of a Sy-style macro against Pqing it, and it looks pretty ass. To ensure this isn't just placebo, here's three troff sessions: -- >8 -- $ troff -mdoc (ibid) x T ps x res 72000 1 1 x init p1 x font 5 TR f5 s10000 V12000 H72000 md DFd t(ibid) n12000 0 x trailer V792000 x stop $ troff -mdoc .Pq ibid x T ps x res 72000 1 1 x init p1 V12000 H72000 DFd x font 5 TR f5 s10000 h1666 md t( h1666 tibid h1666 t) h1666 n12000 0 x trailer V792000 x stop $ troff -mdoc .No ( ibid ) x T ps x res 72000 1 1 x init p1 x font 5 TR f5 s10000 V12000 H72000 md DFd t(ibid) n12000 0 x trailer V792000 x stop -- >8 -- "(ibid)" and ".No ( ibid )" yield just "(ibid)", ".Pq ibid" adds 'h' (horizontal motion?). If we insert some spaces, we get: -- >8 -- $ troff -mdoc (\|ibid\|) x T ps x res 72000 1 1 x init p1 x font 5 TR f5 s10000 V12000 H72000 md DFd t( h1666 tibid h1666 t) n12000 0 x trailer V792000 x stop -- >8 -- i.e. ".Pq ibid" is "(\|ibid\|)", so with ⅙m space around the text. Huge. This doesn't seem to be an inherent limitation of groff/mdoc, and instead appears to be explicit in /usr/share/groff/1.22.4/tmac/mdoc/doc-ditroff as doc-left-parenthesis (and doc-left-bracket for B[qoc], and the -right- variants, naturally). As a test, I've removed these spaces from the strings, and run off three copies of a monograph: * job 3300 is stock groff * job 3301 has \|s removed from doc-*-parenthesis * job 3302 has \^s removed from doc-*-bracket which are available for comparison at https://lfs.nabijaczleweli.xyz/0012-groff-mdoc-*q-spacing I especially direct your attention to pp. 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 12, 14, 15; this is especially egregious in the big paragraph on page 10, which no longer consists of 20% blank space. For Bq, I find the last paragraph of page 68 very illustrative (and the SYNOPSIS looks markedly better, too). In groff, these blame back to the original mdoc rewrite in 2001ish, and are blindly copied from 4.4BSD-Lite2: -- >8 -- usr/src/share/tmac/doc-nroff:.ds lP \fR\|(\fP usr/src/share/tmac/doc-nroff:.ds rP \fR\|)\fP usr/src/share/tmac/doc-nroff:.ds lB \fR\|[\|\fP usr/src/share/tmac/doc-nroff:.ds rB \fR\|]\fP usr/src/share/tmac/doc-ditroff:.ds lP \fR\|(\|\fP\s10 usr/src/share/tmac/doc-ditroff:.ds rP \fR\|)\|\fP\s10 usr/src/share/tmac/doc-ditroff:.ds lB \fR\^[\^\fP\s10 usr/src/share/tmac/doc-ditroff:.ds rB \fR\^]\fP\s10 -- >8 -- None of the other encapsulation macros I found in /usr/share/groff/1.22.4/tmac/mdoc/doc.tmac have these spaces, and for comparison Op has them (in groff and 4.4BSD) but Oo and Oc don't (likewise), so this reads to me like compensation for like deficient font metrics on the phototypesetters of yore? or something? It'd be great if you could consider dropping them :) Best, наб -- System Information: Debian Release: 11.5 APT prefers stable-updates APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'stable-security'), (500, 'stable-debug'), (500, 'stable') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Foreign Architectures: i386 Kernel: Linux 5.10.0-17-amd64 (SMP w/24 CPU threads) Kernel taint flags: TAINT_PROPRIETARY_MODULE, TAINT_FIRMWARE_WORKAROUND, TAINT_OOT_MODULE, TAINT_UNSIGNED_MODULE Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_GB:en Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system) LSM: AppArmor: enabled Versions of packages groff-base depends on: ii libc6 2.31-13+deb11u4 ii libgcc-s1 10.2.1-6 ii libstdc++6 10.2.1-6 ii libuchardet0 0.0.7-1 groff-base recommends no packages. Versions of packages groff-base suggests: ii groff 1.22.4-6 -- no debconf information
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