Hi Branden, On 4/30/23 17:00, G. Branden Robinson wrote: > Hi Alex, > > At 2023-04-30T16:40:11+0200, Alejandro Colomar wrote: >> This one seems serious, and not just a minor inconvenience. You can >> reproduce it in the current ascii.7 page from the Linux Manual Pages. >> The table separator is gone (except for some aberration at the end, >> which even invades the following subsection). > > I know about this one, and regard it as cosmetic.
Yep, it's cosmetic; bigger cosmetics than some innocuous extra vertical space, but cosmetic. > > Bjarni reported it back on 25 March. > > https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?63960 Good. > > It is assuredly ugly--and please have no doubt that I find it highly > irritating--but it destroys no information. On the bright side, there's > no longer a spurious blank line in the midst of the table. :) > >> I don't know if the CW font selection right above the table is >> somehow guilty). > > Nope, nothing to do with it. The ugliness arises from two factors: > > 1. The "continuous rendering" mode used by groff man(7) and mdoc(7) > uses a technique that is more complicated than simply setting the > page length to a huge value, but then shortening it when the page > text ends, leaving only enough room for format the page footer. > > (Long-term, I think making that change will resolve #63960, but not > all of the bad behavior.) > > 2. GNU tbl deliberately draws horizontal and vertical rules too long on > nroff devices. This was a deliberate design choice, and it's there > for a good reason, but in my opinion it is too ugly to live and > should replaced with another method, for which I have ideas. > > https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?62471 > > If you can't stand for it to be in your man page, ditch the vertical > rule from the table format. > > -l l l l | l l l l. > +l l l l l l l l. > > People will still understand the table. And you can put it back when I > get the above 2 bugs fixed. I prefer having it there. It doesn't hurt more than not having the rule at all, apart from being quite weird. But it's clearly a bug, and I don't think it will confuse anyone. Cheers, Alex > > Regards, > Branden -- <http://www.alejandro-colomar.es/> GPG key fingerprint: A9348594CE31283A826FBDD8D57633D441E25BB5
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