Hi Dave, Dave Kemper wrote on Mon, Jan 19, 2026 at 08:07:49AM -0600: > On Mon, Jan 19, 2026 at 5:04 AM Ingo Schwarze <[email protected]> wrote:
>> I had to look up what \n[.y] even is, and now i find it weird that >> this register exists at all. That's not something documents should >> access or depend on. > That would be true if no features of groff ever changed from one > release to another, or if no bugs were ever fixed that might need > workarounds in older groffs. Even in software configuration systems / build systems, checking version numbers is by far the worst approach for making decisions how to build. In a document intended to be typeset, inspecting version numbers in order to work around bugs or missing features in old typesetter versions feels just insane. Simply write the document for a given minimum typesetter version and be done with it. Or if you are maintaining a macro set, each version of the macroset you release should simply be designed for a minimum typesetter version. The only macrosets where document portability matters, including to older typesetters, are man(7) and mdoc(7) - and nobody uses .y there, and it would be insane if anyone did. But to return to the topic of the discussion, both Colin and myself hope for consistent version numbers in release tarballs (and both of us admitted that mixups of version numbers are easy to work around in build systems, so these are not the worst issues imaginable). Anyway, i'm not really asking for deletion of the .y feature, nor should it stand in the way of consistent version numbers in tarballs. Yours, Ingo
