Suggestion: describe formatting of ENVIRONMENT section in mdoc(7)

Suggestion: describe formatting of ENVIRONMENT section in mdoc(7)

[onf]

Hi all,

the description of the ENVIRONMENT section in mdoc(7) says:
  Lists the environment variables used by the utility, and explains
  the syntax and semantics of their values.  The environ(7) manual
  provides examples of typical content and formatting.

Except my system's environ(7) is written in man, so all I can tell
is that they're formatting the list of env vars as if I used
  .Bl -tag -width 7n

But when I look at the source of OpenBSD's environ(7), they are using
  .Bl -tag -width LONGEST-ENV-VAR-HERE

Including such details in mdoc(7) would be helpful for users on
platforms where mdoc isn't the norm.

Cheers,
onf
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Re: Suggestion: describe formatting of ENVIRONMENT section in mdoc(7)

[onf]

On Wed Oct 22, 2025 at 8:02 PM CEST, onf wrote:
> the description of the ENVIRONMENT section in mdoc(7) says:
>   Lists the environment variables used by the utility, and explains
>   the syntax and semantics of their values.  The environ(7) manual
>   provides examples of typical content and formatting.
>
> Except my system's environ(7) is written in man, so all I can tell
> is that they're formatting the list of env vars as if I used
>   .Bl -tag -width 7n
>
> But when I look at the source of OpenBSD's environ(7), they are using
>   .Bl -tag -width LONGEST-ENV-VAR-HERE

P.S. This difference is NOT due to the largest env var being 7 chars
     long in my system's environ(7). For instance, the local environ(7)
     includes:
       LOGNAME
              The name of the logged-in user (used by some System-V derived
              programs).  Set at login time, see section NOTES below.
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