Re: -man "line scope broken"

[Kristaps Dzonsons <kristaps@bsd.lv>]

>> The TODO states:
>>
>> - bashbug(1) complains "line scope broken" after
>>    .SM
>>    .B something
>>    should either just work or be a warning
>>    reported by naddy@
>>
>> I don't understand this.  Why shouldn't it be an error (it's a
>> regular error, not a fatal one)?  After all, the `SM' is lost by the
>> subsequent `B' (tested under groff -Tps): information is clearly
>> lost.
>
> What i meant when writing "... but typically, preparing that output
> involves information loss, ..." in mandoc(1) was _significant_
> information loss, i.e. loss of information that the manual author
> intended to convey to the manual reader, typically loss of a part
> of the text of the manual, as opposed to loss of information in a
> mathematical sense.  When there is no text to be lost, even if the
> information is lost that these zero words should be rendered in
> small font, i don't think we need to regard that as significant
> information loss.  Even less so given that we don't distinguish
> font sizes in terminal output anyway, which is the most important
> output mode.
>
> Maybe we can amend the wording in the manual to reduce the risk
> of confusion?  But i don't have a good suggestion to improve the
> wording right now...
>
>> Changing it to a warning is trivial, but I want to be sure
>> that this is meaningful.
>
> In think the description of a warning fits quite well here:
>
>     warning  An input file uses obsolete, discouraged or non-portable
>              syntax.  All the same, the meaning of the input is
>              unambiguous and a correct rendering can be produced.
>
> Which is, here, dropping the .SM and rendering "something"
> as plain bold.

Ingo,

Thanks for the clarification---the language is pretty clear, I just 
wanted to be doubly-sure that downgrading was the correct solution.

Anyway, this has been fixed.  Thanks!

Kristaps

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