Bl bullet.

Bl bullet.

[Kristaps Dzonsons]

Hi,

What the hell is with groff's `Bl -bullet'?  "+\b+\bo\bo" makes no sense
to me.  Do we really need to preserve this behaviour, or can we just use
o\bo as it is right now in the code?

(Cf. the TODO file.)

Thanks,

Kristaps
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Re: Bl bullet.

[Ingo Schwarze]

Hi Kristaps,

> What the hell is with groff's `Bl -bullet'?
> "+\b+\bo\bo" makes no sense to me.

I suspect some devices render (or rendered?) that as real bullet
and not just a bold 'o', by printing a bold '+' and a bold 'o'
in the same place.  I can't confirm that, though; neither my
VGA glass console (TERM=vt220) nor my xterm (TERM=xterm) does so.
On both devices, it looks just the same as "o\bo".  And i don't
have a wire matrix printer around right now.  ;-)

> Do we really need to preserve this behaviour, or can we just use
> o\bo as it is right now in the code?

Well, it is certainly not critical, and i admit i can't provide
really good reasons for it.  On the other hand, it is a gratuitious
difference.  What does it cost fixing it?  Or is there any downside
when changing to "+\b+\bo\bo"?

Yours,
  Ingo
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Re: Bl bullet.

[Kristaps Dzonsons]

>> What the hell is with groff's `Bl -bullet'?
>> "+\b+\bo\bo" makes no sense to me.
> 
> I suspect some devices render (or rendered?) that as real bullet
> and not just a bold 'o', by printing a bold '+' and a bold 'o'
> in the same place.  I can't confirm that, though; neither my
> VGA glass console (TERM=vt220) nor my xterm (TERM=xterm) does so.
> On both devices, it looks just the same as "o\bo".  And i don't
> have a wire matrix printer around right now.  ;-)
> 
>> Do we really need to preserve this behaviour, or can we just use
>> o\bo as it is right now in the code?
> 
> Well, it is certainly not critical, and i admit i can't provide
> really good reasons for it.  On the other hand, it is a gratuitious
> difference.  What does it cost fixing it?  Or is there any downside
> when changing to "+\b+\bo\bo"?

For now, I'm going to just leave it as-is.

The problem is that this introduces a naughty character: the 
interstitial \b.  The "+\b+" is ok (bold "+"), as is the "o\bo", but the 
middle \b is not allowed.  And I'd rather not lift the ASCII invariant 
from the low-level drivers for now.

Kristaps
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