Proper Macro for Types

[Robert Mustacchi <rm@fingolfin.org>]

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
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