Re: [groff] man7/groff.man. Was Make editorial changes.

At 2019-07-01T15:02:35-0400, Doug McIlroy wrote: > I agree with Ingo about proposed descriptions of \& and sentence > spaces. Elaboration is not explanation. The context of the elaboration under discussion is portability and style advice in the groff_man(7) page. On my to-do list, and as copiousl

Re: [groff] 04/05: {g, n}roff.1.man: Give assistance to pager users.

At 2019-07-01T18:44:47+0200, Tadziu Hoffmann wrote: > > Now, conversely, the backspacing semantic model supports arbitrary > > character composition, which glass TTYs and their emulators never > > do. (Almost never? I'd love to hear of any exceptions.) > > Tektronix (storage scope) terminals all

Re: [groff] 04/05: {g, n}roff.1.man: Give assistance to pager users.

> > *I was trying to get the 1976 edition of CSTR #54 to typeset the other > evening* Where did you manage to get hold of that? I was under the impression that the source code of CSTR #54 was long lost to the sands of time... :| BTW, stupid question: how did people in the 70s read lengthy files

[groff] 1976 version of CSTR #54 (Nroff/Troff User's Manual by Ossanna)

At 2019-07-03T00:46:32+1000, John Gardner wrote: > > *I was trying to get the 1976 edition of CSTR #54 to typeset the > > other evening* > > Where did you manage to get hold of that? I was under the impression that > the source code of CSTR #54 was long lost to the sands of time... :| https://www

Re: [groff] man 7 groff; was nroff.1.man Make editorial fixes.

> A personal false-identification hazard: > in the court of groff I will be declared innocent if I call > myself M. Douglas McIlroy, > but will be sentenced if I call myself Mr. Douglas McIlroy, Not sure what you mean here. Groff will treat both exactly the same, it's TeX that will treat them di

Re: [groff] man 7 groff; was nroff.1.man Make editorial fixes.

> > *or some other markup language that allows text reflow* Text reflow? What the hell is that? =) Seriously though, I advocate the "one sentence per line" rule in reflow-friendly languages as much as possible. Aside from

Re: [groff] man 7 groff; was nroff.1.man Make editorial fixes.

> I advocate the "one sentence per line" rule [...] If you mean "one whole sentence per line", then I'll object. I think it's good to start each sentence on a new line, while still breaking the text at semantically convenient boundaries so that no source text line exceeds a certain limit (for ex

Re: [groff] 04/05: {g, n}roff.1.man: Give assistance to pager users.

On Tue, Jul 2, 2019 at 7:51 AM John Gardner wrote: > BTW, stupid question: how did people in the 70s read > lengthy files without a pager...? When I ran Unix 7 on > SIMH, it lacked both less(1) *and* more(1). If more (or the equivalent) wasn't available, being adroit with the and keys was the

Re: [groff] man 7 groff; was nroff.1.man Make editorial fixes.

> > *When writing *roff text, you'll need to break your lines anyway, if > you're calling macros.* I'm speaking much more broadly about plain-text and prose in general. Specifically, mediums such as text-editors where soft-wrapping makes it easier for authors to lose track of how much they're waf

Re: [groff] 04/05: {g, n}roff.1.man: Give assistance to pager users.

> > > *Some terminals, the Tek 401x series especially, could* > *be configured to tell the host to stop sending text on* > *a "page full" condition. Some sent the proper RS-232**hardware signals, > some sent /.* Really? That's interesting. What did do? On the terminal emulators I have on hand a

Re: [groff] 04/05: {g, n}roff.1.man: Give assistance to pager users.

> > Some terminals, the Tek 401x series especially, could > > be configured to tell the host to stop sending text on > > a "page full" condition. Some sent the proper RS-232 > > hardware signals, some sent /. > Really? That's interesting. What did do? On the > terminal emulators I have on hand

Re: [groff] 04/05: {g, n}roff.1.man: Give assistance to pager users.

On Wed, 3 Jul 2019, John Gardner wrote: *Some terminals, the Tek 401x series especially, could* *be configured to tell the host to stop sending text on* *a "page full" condition. Some sent the proper RS-232**hardware signals, some sent /.* Really? That's interesting. What did do? On the ter

Re: [groff] 04/05: {g, n}roff.1.man: Give assistance to pager users.

> > > *There were 24 lines per page unless over-ridden on the command line.* > *The tool was real unix tool, lean and mean with only a few arguments.* > *It was far less functional than either 'more' or 'less' but it did**let > you page through a file or STDIN nicely* Yep, that's the sort of page

Re: [groff] 04/05: {g, n}roff.1.man: Give assistance to pager users.

On Wed, 3 Jul 2019, John Gardner wrote: There were 24 lines per page unless over-ridden on the command line. The tool was real unix tool, lean and mean with only a few arguments. It was far less functional than either 'more' or 'less' but it did let you

Re: [groff] 04/05: {g, n}roff.1.man: Give assistance to pager users.

> > > *Particularly irritating was emacs's use of for* > *"search" because it conflicted with this flow-control, meaning* > *that you had to either reconfigure your tty settings or the**emacs > keybindings.* I still remember my first experience with Emacs: 1. Open file, edit buffer 2. Undo a mi

Re: [groff] 04/05: {g, n}roff.1.man: Give assistance to pager users.

On Wed, 3 Jul 2019, John Gardner wrote: Surely 300 baud was a more refreshing[1] experience than an electromechanical teletypewriter, right? Never used one. I am NOT that old! Although I saw maybe 2 in my life. Regards - Damian Pacific Engineering Systems International, 277-279 Broadway, Gle

Re: [groff] 04/05: {g, n}roff.1.man: Give assistance to pager users.

I've lost the link, but I remember somebody got hold of a hard-copy terminal somehow and used it to display his Twitter's newsfeed by threading output through a serial port hooked up to his Linux workstation. The output wasn't much to look at, but the effort somebody went to to connect two technol

Re: [groff] 04/05: {g, n}roff.1.man: Give assistance to pager users.

On Wed, 3 Jul 2019, John Gardner wrote: I've lost the link, but I remember somebody got hold of a hard-copy terminal somehow and used it to display his Twitter's newsfeed by threading output through a serial port hooked up to his Linux workstation. The output wasn't much to look at, but the effo