Dear Branden, On Sun Feb 23, 2025 at 12:53 AM CET, G. Branden Robinson wrote: > [...] > > It doesn't, because there is not a single line containing a comment > > separated from the argument by a space. Read the examples I gave > > above. > > I understand now. You are bewailing the removal of support for an even > narrower class of practice than I had thought. > > I guess I don't perceive this as the crisis that you do, nor as an act > of cruelty to groff's user community, given that they can now manipulate > file names that include spaces, which as noted in the thread is not an > uncommon practice among those who are not conservative Unix veterans > scarred by the fires of shell scripts gone astray. > > Were it not for that benefit, I'd probably leave well enough alone. But > that, plus the obvious upside in reducing the number of rules and > special cases in *roff (or at least groff) grammar one has to keep in > the head, seems worthwhile to me. And so far, at least, it has drawn no > other protest.
I would ask you if you could kindly stop misrepresenting my words. 1. I don't perceive this change as a crisis. 2. I don't perceive this change as an "act of cruelty" to groff's users 3. I am not protesting this change. I was just trying to bring to your attention that: 1. This breaks compatibility with both older versions of groff and with other troffs. 2. This change, as it stands, is unlikely to be picked up by neatroff 2a. because it breaks backwards compat with older versions of neatroff 2b. because it would necessitate ugly changes to the code 3. Given the above, that the price for simplifying groff's grammar is decreased interoperability. That's all I was trying to say, thanks. ~ onf
