discuss@mandoc.bsd.lv
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
From: Robert Mustacchi <rm@fingolfin.org>
To: discuss@mandoc.bsd.lv
Subject: Proper Macro for Types
Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2022 09:12:31 -0800	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <55d4f359-c30a-7df1-2e35-33f73f3c52f4@fingolfin.org> (raw)

Hi there,

While guiding new folks through writing manual pages in illumos, there
is one area that comes up frequently and generates a little confusion
for folks, which is the proper markup for the name of a type (generally
a structure, but could be a typedef) and for members/fields of structures.

The mdoc(7) manual makes the latter of these pretty obvious with the use
of .Fa with "This macro is also used to specify the field name of a
structure."

When it comes to types themselves more generally, it's a little less
clear. We have .Ft and .Vt, which deal with types that are part of a
function synopsis (or related to the function in later prose) and the
latter is meant to deal with an explicit variable type. However, in a
lot of the illumos documentation we are often discussing a structure or
type that is not always directly related to a function signature or
global variable (for example, because we're in an overview section).

As an attempt at a more concrete example, consider a discussion of a
file system (illumos has chapters on various file systems, ioctl
interfaces, etc.) and wanting to discuss a time_t (or some other time
related C structure). In this context there is no function or variable
that is being referred to.

For types which are not directly related to a function or variable, in
illumos we've been using .Vt. Is this correct? If not, what is the right
macro to use? Either way could we perhaps add a statement to mdoc(7)
about the right macro to use for this? The statement regarding .Fa has
been very helpful and makes it quite clear what to do.

Thanks,
Robert
--
 To unsubscribe send an email to discuss+unsubscribe@mandoc.bsd.lv


             reply	other threads:[~2022-01-29 17:12 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 2+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2022-01-29 17:12 Robert Mustacchi [this message]
2022-03-12  1:49 Paul A. Patience

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

  Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style

* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
  switches of git-send-email(1):

  git send-email \
    --in-reply-to=55d4f359-c30a-7df1-2e35-33f73f3c52f4@fingolfin.org \
    --to=rm@fingolfin.org \
    --cc=discuss@mandoc.bsd.lv \
    /path/to/YOUR_REPLY

  https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html

* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
  via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for NNTP newsgroup(s).