Unknown macros: .ti, .ce, .fc, from nmh

Unknown macros: .ti, .ce, .fc, from nmh

[Anthony J. Bentley]

Hi,

nmh (in OpenBSD, FreeBSD, and pkgsrc as mail/nmh) has some manpage macros
that mandoc doesn't know:


mandoc -Tlint:
repl.1:97:2: ERROR: skipping unknown macro: .ti +3 
repl.1:137:2: ERROR: skipping unknown macro: .ti +\w'In\-Reply\-To: 'u
repl.1:151:2: ERROR: skipping unknown macro: .ti +\w'In\-Reply\-To: 'u

Source:
.PP
.RS 5
.nf
snip
Comments: In\-Reply\-To <From> or <apparently from> or <Sender>
.ti +3
message dated <date>
--------
.fi
.RE

Groff output:
            snip
            Comments: In-Reply-To <From> or <apparently from> or <Sender>
               message dated <date>
            --------


mandoc -Tlint:
slocal.1:130:2: ERROR: skipping unknown macro: .ce

Source:
.PP
snip
.PP
.ce
\*(lq|\ /usr/local/libexec/slocal\ \-user\ username\*(rq

Groff output:
       snip
            "| /usr/local/libexec/slocal -user username"


mandoc -Tlint:
send.1:412:2: ERROR: skipping unknown macro: .fc ^ ~

Source:
.SH FILES
.fc ^ ~
.nf
.ta \w'/usr/local/lib/nmh/ExtraBigFileName  'u
^$HOME/\&.mh\(ruprofile~^The user profile
.fi

Groff output:
FILES
       $HOME/.mh_profile                    The user profile


--
Anthony J. Bentley
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Re: Unknown macros: .ti, .ce, .fc, from nmh

[Ingo Schwarze]

Hi Anthony,

Anthony J. Bentley wrote on Mon, Apr 23, 2012 at 01:38:28PM -0600:

> nmh (in OpenBSD, FreeBSD, and pkgsrc as mail/nmh) has some manpage
> macros that mandoc doesn't know:
> 
> mandoc -Tlint:
> repl.1:97:2: ERROR: skipping unknown macro: .ti +3 
> repl.1:137:2: ERROR: skipping unknown macro: .ti +\w'In\-Reply\-To: 'u
> repl.1:151:2: ERROR: skipping unknown macro: .ti +\w'In\-Reply\-To: 'u
[...]
> mandoc -Tlint:
> slocal.1:130:2: ERROR: skipping unknown macro: .ce
[...]
> mandoc -Tlint:
> send.1:412:2: ERROR: skipping unknown macro: .fc ^ ~

Thanks for reporting!
I took a note in the TODO file,

  http://mdocml.bsd.lv/cgi-bin/cvsweb/TODO?cvsroot=mdocml

   - xloadimage(1) wants .ti (temporary indent), rep by naddy@
  +  reported again by bentley@ in nmh(1)  Mon, 23 Apr 2012 13:38:28 -0600
  +  also uses .ce (center N lines) and .fc (field control)

There is nothing wrong with reporting missing features multiple
times, it makes a difference for coding priorities whether one
or a hundred pages require a particular feature.

However, regarding the priorities in this particular case:

 - .ti is very low level (acting on a single output line)
   and doesn't fit well into the syntax tree concept,
   so the implementation is going to be ugly; besides,
   fortunately, it seems to be used rarely
 - same for .ce, which is even more ugly and even more rare
 - so both are not likely to get much priority
 - the very concept behind .fc is terribly complicated;
   besides, fine-tuning horizontal spacing in this way
   is not very useful in -Tascii mode, so i'd call the
   chances that we might implement .fc negligible

At least for now, mail/nmh must continue to USE_GROFF,
unless the upstream author decides to avoid mixing such
low-level roff(7) requests into his man(7) code, which is
likely to be easily feasible, but maybe not likely to happen.

Yours,
  Ingo

P.S.
Sorry that this answer took some time, but it didn't look that
urgent, and i was rather busy.
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