> On Sun, May 13, 2018 at 8:14 PM, Rodney W. Grimes < > free...@pdx.rh.cn85.dnsmgr.net> wrote: > > > > It did take me some time to track down this "crazy concept you all > > think I just invented", but it is infact in the GNU groff info > > documentaton (found on my 5.4 systems in /usr/share/info/groff.info.gz): > > Just to be clear, I don't think these rules apply to FreeBSD. We use > mandoc. See mandoc(1) for the rules that apply to us.
That is a rather fine line. mandoc is a replacement set for groff -man, which is a replacement for troff/nroff man. What I found are helpful guidelines for anyone writting groff type input, they still apply to mandoc. > > And, again, just to be clear, I am also pretty sure the following rule > doesn't apply: > > > * In keeping with this, it is helpful to begin a new line after every ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Again, these are helpful things that have been around for a very decades, and for someone who has worked on a good deal of *roff input, it is truely helpful in many ways to do this. As one sample of helpful it makes it usually easier to find things in the *roff sources when trying to edit a manpage, Another is it minimizes diffs when making changes. > > comma or phrase, since common corrections are to add or delete > > sentences or phrases. > > OTOH, I believe we do have a rule about beginning each sentence on a new > line. (Again, see mandoc(1).) Yes > > And, it is easy to figure out whether your page complies with the style > using mandoc's checkers. Comply with and being of good style and design are not one and the same. > For example: > > $ mandoc -W all,stop /usr/share/man/man9/tcp_functions.9.gz > mandoc: /usr/share/man/man9/tcp_functions.9.gz:284:16: WARNING: new > sentence, new line > > Jonathan > > PS: I'm happy to be corrected by one of the man page experts, which I most > certainly am not. I would encoruage the man page expects to adopt this set of helpful guidelines, not necessarily making them hard rules, but at least suggesting one knows about them. -- Rod Grimes rgri...@freebsd.org _______________________________________________ svn-src-all@freebsd.org mailing list https://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/svn-src-all To unsubscribe, send any mail to "svn-src-all-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"