Re: Mandoc Not Parsing Sy Macro (In some cases)

[Abhinav Upadhyay <er.abhinav.upadhyay@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Jan 9, 2017 at 7:10 PM, Ingo Schwarze <schwarze@usta.de> wrote:
> Hi Abhinav,
>
> Abhinav Upadhyay wrote on Mon, Jan 09, 2017 at 04:06:43PM +0530:
>
>> Whereas in the places where it was being rendered correctly, we were
>> using Ta, like this:
>>
>> It Sy Name  Ta Sy Constant     Ta Sy Next level names Ta Sy Description
>
> Yes, that is exactly why you should preferably use Ta and not
> literal tabs.  It's much easier to use correctly, and the mdoc(7)
> source code is easier to read.
>
> If you insist on using literal tabs, you need a blank character
> between the tab and the following macro.
>
> Yes, that is weird: a blank is syntactically significant after
> a tab.  But that's just how roff traditionally behaves.

Ah, I wasn't aware of it, and it is also quite difficult to catch :)

>
>> I think this issue was not present in the previous version of mandoc,
>
> Yes, 1.13.3 had a bug processing the first word after a tab
> incorrectly.  It was fixed on October 17, 2015.
>
> See
>
> http://cvsweb.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/src/regress/usr.bin/mandoc/mdoc/Bl/column.in
>
> in particular the commit message of revision 1.8, the test code
> added by that commit, and the correct output in
>
> http://cvsweb.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/src/regress/usr.bin/mandoc/mdoc/Bl/column.out_ascii?rev=HEAD&content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup
>
>> It has been noticed only with the latest release.
>
> The proper response is to fix your manual pages.  You should do that
> because as they are, they are not portable and won't work with groff.
> Either insert the missing blanks or - much better for clarity
> and robustness - use Ta rather than bare tabs.

Yes, we have already changed to using Ta.

> I think i will also commit a clarification to the mdoc(7) manual
> because this is indeed a nasty trap for the unwary.

Thanks :)

-
Abhinav
--
 To unsubscribe send an email to discuss+unsubscribe@mdocml.bsd.lv