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    SubjectRe: [PATCH 22/24] membarrier.2: Note that glibc does not provide a wrapper
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    Hi Branden,

    On 9/21/20 4:36 PM, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
    > At 2020-09-11T12:58:08+0000, Walter Harms wrote:
    >> the groff commands are ducument in man 7 groff
    >> .nf No filling or adjusting of output-lines.
    >> .fi Fill output lines
    >>
    >> (for me) a typical use is like this:
    >> .nf
    >>
    >> struct timeval {
    >> time_t tv_sec; /* seconds */
    >> suseconds_t tv_usec; /* microseconds */
    >> };
    >> .fi
    >>
    >> In the top section you prevent indenting (if any).
    >
    > The above will not work as desired for typesetter output, a.k.a., "troff
    > devices", such as PostScript or PDF. The initial code indent might work
    > okay but the alignment of the field names will become
    > ragged/mis-registered and the comments even more so.

    Yes.

    > This is because a proportional font is used by default for troff
    > devices. The classical man macros, going back to Version 7 Unix (1979)
    > had no good solution for this problem and Unix room tradition at Murray
    > Hill going all the way back to (what we now call) the First Edition
    > manual in 1971 was to read the man pages on a typewriter--a Teletype
    > Model 33 or Model 37. Typewriters, of course, always[1] used monospaced
    > fonts.
    >
    > Version 9 Unix (1986) introduced .EX and .EE for setting material in a
    > monospaced font even if the device used proportional type by default.
    > (Plan 9 troff inherited them.) GNU roff has supporteds .EX and .EE as
    > well, for over 13 years, and its implementations are ultra-permissively
    > licensed so other *roffs like Heirloom Doctools have picked them up.
    > Therefore I recommend .EX and .EE for all code examples.
    >
    > They are very simple to use. In the above, simply replace ".nf" with
    > ".EX" and ".fi" with ".EE".
    >
    > Regards,
    > Branden
    >
    > [1] Not completely true; variable-pitch typewriters (such as 10/12 point
    > selectable) were fairly common and some expensive models like the IBM
    > Executive even featured true proportional type.

    Thanks for the interesting history, Branden!

    From time toi time I wonder if the function prototypes in
    the SYNOPSIS should also be inside .EX/.EE. Your thoughts?

    Thanks,

    Michael


    --
    Michael Kerrisk
    Linux man-pages maintainer; http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/
    Linux/UNIX System Programming Training: http://man7.org/training/

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