From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from mail-ie0-f178.google.com (mail-ie0-f178.google.com [209.85.223.178]) by krisdoz.my.domain (8.14.5/8.14.5) with ESMTP id s9T3eiHW010039 for ; Tue, 28 Oct 2014 23:40:44 -0400 (EDT) Received: by mail-ie0-f178.google.com with SMTP id rl12so2200986iec.9 for ; Tue, 28 Oct 2014 20:40:38 -0700 (PDT) X-Google-DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=1e100.net; s=20130820; h=x-gm-message-state:from:to:subject:mime-version:content-type :content-id:date:message-id; bh=9S4UC8TNHOMPvRKfpIkrE2AyWeISPSrjQ3XdP5vOEuw=; b=A3du68AsVE/TkHpl6YgFNOB3WTi92RQnW+8i697ySdDs8E15DzzQ4irnjjnASC3yRf sXUpkhhms4n2lWe7s2FK/q3f9RxE+ac0iw4wDDrNi/cMmzkfSviYFoJm4Abz/27YHpgp m3b0/ZExcBM1nguALBiiV02acBXY/AKnR50wHnF0TDHdCGnGL8zSZ39zcEmbloosK2Fw zUXG18/HxXkkz7Q58lFmG7VhHJmrd1Kp3wsJjFzGOKSsOe8OTKeRk3C7NZRql2p7WajB aR903i6RNBootPgULZjtjtT7bXG8ouPfjDELsdgO705ALTX5g7uQNnqlsY/K5YUeLdH4 +2AQ== X-Gm-Message-State: ALoCoQkWcY3qH/PCnA5ks5QbAevA+TTAFBHoIKSpI4zqheBIaxuBUM+hezYglDRvBrDt5+qsyGp0 X-Received: by 10.42.53.80 with SMTP id m16mr7973378icg.43.1414554038232; Tue, 28 Oct 2014 20:40:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: from cathet.us. (67-0-100-210.albq.qwest.net. [67.0.100.210]) by mx.google.com with ESMTPSA id jd6sm1876542igb.16.2014.10.28.20.40.37 for (version=TLSv1.2 cipher=ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 bits=128/128); Tue, 28 Oct 2014 20:40:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: from cathet.us (localhost [127.0.0.1]); by cathet.us. (OpenSMTPD) with ESMTP id e2abf980; for ; Tue, 28 Oct 2014 21:40:36 -0600 (MDT) From: "Anthony J. Bentley" To: tech@mdocml.bsd.lv Subject: Description of Bl ... -width X-Mailinglist: mdocml-tech Reply-To: tech@mdocml.bsd.lv MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-ID: <30705.1414554036.1@cathet.us> Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2014 21:40:36 -0600 Message-ID: <13567.1414554036@cathet.us> Hi, I've spent a long time blindly typing ".Bl -tag -width Ds" without understanding what it meant. In the back of my mind I just assumed Ds triggered an indent of two characters, never noticing that the indent in the result is obviously not two characters. This is what mdoc(7) says about the -width argument to Bl: The -width and -offset arguments accept scaling widths as described in roff(7) or use the length of the given string. In reality: /* * Calculate the real width of a list from the -width string, * which may contain a macro (with a known default width), a * literal string, or a scaling width. * * If the value to -width is a macro, then we re-write it to be * the macro's width as set in share/tmac/mdoc/doc-common. */ The macro part is documented in mdoc(7), but only under Bd's -offset: -offset width Indent the display by the width, which may be one of the following: ... A macro invocation, which selects a predefined width associated with that macro. The most popular is the imaginary macro Ds, which resolves to 6n. ... It looks like Bl's -offset matches the manual and doesn't support determining macro widths. So that leaves just Bl's -width that is documented wrong. Here is an attempt to fix it--does this make sense? But I'm not sure the paragraph flows very well now. Index: mdoc.7 =================================================================== RCS file: /cvs/src/share/man/man7/mdoc.7,v retrieving revision 1.120 diff -u -p -u -p -r1.120 mdoc.7 --- mdoc.7 12 Oct 2014 02:59:04 -0000 1.120 +++ mdoc.7 29 Oct 2014 03:27:35 -0000 @@ -940,6 +940,14 @@ and arguments accept scaling widths as described in .Xr roff 7 or use the length of the given string. +In addition, the argument to +.Fl width +may be a macro invocation, in which case a predefined width associated with +that macro is chosen. +The most popular is the imaginary macro +.Ar \&Ds , +which resolves to the scaling width +.Sy 6n . The .Fl offset is a global indentation for the whole list, affecting both item heads -- To unsubscribe send an email to tech+unsubscribe@mdocml.bsd.lv