gbranden pushed a commit to branch master
in repository groff.
commit 156b29dae5b5f378b4136a192b541feaf68ba97f
Author: G. Branden Robinson <[email protected]>
AuthorDate: Sat Jun 28 19:48:40 2025 -0500
doc/*,man/*: Update sentence-ending punct advice.
It's not necessary to "guard" a non-sentential [.?!] from a subsequent
tab character; the formatter represents tab stop advancement by a
horizontal motion, which is "not space", so it undergoes neither
ordinary adjustment not inter-sentence space supplementation.
When filling is enabled, a newline after a tab becomes an adjustable
word space as usual.
Here's an illustration using leaders, which work the same way as tabs,
but are more visible in output.
$ cat EXPERIMENTS/sentence-ending-with-leader.roff | tr '\001' '@'
Here's a sentence.
A second sentence.
.br
A sentence followed by a tab?@Hello!
.br
A sentence followed by a tab?@
Hello!
.br
A sentence followed by a tab?\&@
Hello!
$ nroff EXPERIMENTS/sentence-ending-with-leader.roff | cat -s
Here’s a sentence. A second sentence.
A sentence followed by a tab?...Hello!
A sentence followed by a tab?... Hello!
A sentence followed by a tab?... Hello!
Also add additional relevant concept index entries for Texinfo.
Also align input line breaks between our Texinfo manual and roff(7).
---
doc/groff.texi.in | 14 +++++++++++---
man/roff.7.man | 5 ++---
2 files changed, 13 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)
diff --git a/doc/groff.texi.in b/doc/groff.texi.in
index 04b98cdaf..59c2fe1f5 100644
--- a/doc/groff.texi.in
+++ b/doc/groff.texi.in
@@ -5220,7 +5220,8 @@ Welcome to groff.
@endExample
@cindex end-of-sentence characters
-@cindex sentence space
+@cindex sentence-ending punctuation
+@cindex inter-sentence space
@cindex space between sentences
@cindex French spacing
GNU @code{troff} flags certain characters (normally @samp{!}, @samp{?},
@@ -5963,8 +5964,15 @@ punctuation is correlated with pauses for breathing and
changes in
prosody.
@item
-Use @code{\&} after @samp{!}, @samp{?}, and @samp{.} if they are
-followed by space, tab, or newline characters and don't end a sentence.
+Use
+@code{\&}
+after
+@samp{!},
+@samp{?},
+and
+@samp{.}
+if they are followed by space or newline characters
+and don't end a sentence.
@item
In filled text lines, use @code{\&} before @samp{.} and @samp{'} if they
diff --git a/man/roff.7.man b/man/roff.7.man
index 643cc29e3..c8ca74a71 100644
--- a/man/roff.7.man
+++ b/man/roff.7.man
@@ -2133,9 +2133,8 @@ after
.RB \[lq] ?\& \[rq],
and
.RB \[lq] .\& \[rq]
-if they are followed by space,
-tab,
-or newline characters and don't end a sentence.
+if they are followed by space or newline characters
+and don't end a sentence.
.
.
.IP \[bu]
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