gbranden pushed a commit to branch master
in repository groff.
commit e352029493fc2258af4ab211f9bdc4ec2a5c08ad
Author: G. Branden Robinson <[email protected]>
AuthorDate: Thu Dec 26 22:43:46 2024 -0600
NEWS: Clarify item.
I unearthed the origin of groff man(7)'s 78n line length. It was commit
8bb207a362, 3 May 2002.
---
NEWS | 13 +++++++------
1 file changed, 7 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)
diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
index 824807642..0badfcd20 100644
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
@@ -376,12 +376,13 @@ Macro packages
* The an (man), doc (mdoc), and doc-old (mdoc-old) macro packages have
changed the default line length when formatting on terminals from 78n
to 80n. The latter is a vastly more common device configuration, but
- that line length had been avoided for decades (perhaps as long as
- groff has existed) for an undocumented reason. That reason appears
- to have been the interaction of bugs in GNU tbl(1) with an aspect of
- grotty(1)'s design. Those bugs have been resolved. A man(1) program
- can still instruct groff to format for any desired line length by
- setting the `LL` register on {g,n,t}roff's command line.
+ that line length had been avoided since the groff 1.18 release in
+ July 2002 (prior to that, the line length was 65n/6.5i, as in Unix
+ troff), for an undocumented reason. That reason appears to have been
+ the interaction of bugs in GNU tbl(1) with an aspect of grotty(1)'s
+ design. Those bugs have been resolved. A man(1) program can still
+ instruct groff to format for any desired line length by setting the
+ `LL` register on {g,n,t}roff's command line.
* The an (man) and doc (mdoc) macro packages use slightly different
vertical margins than previously, to align more closely with the
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