Hi Ian,
ropers wrote on Sun, Jul 07, 2019 at 12:28:37AM +0200:
> And no, don't ask me how much of my weekend I wasted figuring out how
> to suppress mandoc's insistence upon two spaces after the 'i.e.' just
> because there's a period at the end of a line.
Ouch, sorry about that.
Actually, it's not a mandoc(1) thing, the behaviour was inherited
from groff.
But indeed, it doesn't appear to be explained in the mandoc
documentation, even though it's a somewhat common trap for the
unwary. It was a typical case of someone too familiar with the
subject missing an aspect that needs to be explained. Ironically,
so far, it was only explained in the groff_man(7) manual page, in
the "Zero-width space" list entry. Obviously, no one should have
to read that manual page.
So, i committed the following fix. The place where this is explained
in detail (including an example) is roff(7) because this is really
a roff thing and not specific to manual pages. Then again, since
the page people are advised to study foremost is mdoc(7), i also
put a hint there. It fits well enough below "Delimiters" because
this detail is really an example of a delimiter in need of escaping.
Thanks for the report,
Ingo
Log Message:
-----------
explain escaping of end-of-sentence characters;
missing info reported by Ian <ropers at gmail dot com> on misc@
Modified Files:
--------------
mandoc:
mdoc.7
roff.7
Revision Data
-------------
Index: roff.7
===================================================================
RCS file: /home/cvs/mandoc/mandoc/roff.7,v
retrieving revision 1.113
retrieving revision 1.114
diff -Lroff.7 -Lroff.7 -u -p -r1.113 -r1.114
--- roff.7
+++ roff.7
@@ -315,12 +315,18 @@ delimiters
The proper spacing is also intelligently preserved if a sentence ends at
the boundary of a macro line.
.Pp
+If an input line happens to end with a period, exclamation or question
+mark that isn't the end of a sentence, append a zero-width space
+.Pq Sq \e& .
+.Pp
Examples:
.Bd -literal -offset indent -compact
Do not end sentences mid-line like this. Instead,
end a sentence like this.
A macro would end like this:
\&.Xr mandoc 1 \&.
+An abbreviation at the end of an input line needs escaping, e.g.\e&
+like this.
.Ed
.Sh REQUEST SYNTAX
A request or macro line consists of:
Index: mdoc.7
===================================================================
RCS file: /home/cvs/mandoc/mandoc/mdoc.7,v
retrieving revision 1.278
retrieving revision 1.279
diff -Lmdoc.7 -Lmdoc.7 -u -p -r1.278 -r1.279
--- mdoc.7
+++ mdoc.7
@@ -3005,6 +3005,13 @@ in the same way as a plain
.Sq \&|
character.
Using this predefined string is not recommended in new manuals.
+.Pp
+Appending a zero-width space
+.Pq Sq \e&
+to the end of an input line is also useful to prevent the interpretation
+of a trailing period, exclamation or question mark as the end of a
+sentence, for example when an abbreviation happens to occur
+at the end of a text or macro input line.
.Ss Font handling
In
.Nm
