Werner LEMBERG <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> My fault, wrong question. Another try: What's the problem? The
> current code I have is this:
>
> .if n \{\
> . do ftr CR R
> . do ftr CI I
> . do ftr CB B
> .\}
> .
> .if '\(.T'dvi' \
> . do ftr CB CW
>
> groff's two-letter `do' instruction nicely hides extended groff
> requests...
That's not the problem I see. The problem I see is that this code wires in a
set of assumptions about font mappings that won't necessarily be wanted by
everyone who wants to use .SY/.OP/.YS. .SY/.OP/.YS are mechanism; this is
policy.
I generally find it a good idea to keep mechanism separated from
policy, if only because when I don't I get developers annoyed at me
because they have tripped over policy choices they did not know they
were importing along with the mechanism.
> > I'm now a bit puzzled about why an-old and an-ext have separate
> > existences at all. If we're going to dicument the an-ext things and
> > treat them as first-class citizens, why have two files?
>
> The idea was to have a set of macros (written in pure classical troff)
> which is (a) in the public domain, (b) which runs with all troff
> incarnations, and (c) which man writers might use as a template for
> copying the relevant snippets to the man page's preamble.
>
> I thought we've agreed on that.
I had to puzzle over your "I thought we've agreed on that" for a while
before I got what you were driving at. We sort of did agree, but my
mind was on other aspects of several related problems and I didn't
realize that the split between an-old and an-ext was part of
a plan for propagating these extensions to other *roffs.
Now that my attention has been focused on it, that part makes sense.
I withdraw my non-objection :-).
As soon as you tell me you've finished the merge, I'll resync, look
at what you've dome, and start working on (a) more cleanup, and (b)
documentation.
--
<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a>
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