bugGNU roff - Bugs: bug #59906, [ms] alias MINGW register to GW

 
 

bug #59906: [ms] alias MINGW register to GW

Submitter:  G. Branden Robinson <gbranden>
Submitted:  Tue 19 Jan 2021 04:44:53 AM UTC
   
 
Category:  Macro ms Severity:  1 - Wish
Item Group:  Feature change Status:  Rejected
Privacy:  Public Assigned to:  gbranden
Open/Closed:  Closed Planned Release:  None
* Mandatory Fields

Add a New Comment Rich Markup
   

Sun 06 Jun 2021 04:18:13 PM UTC, comment #2: 

The status quo has been documented for a long time, so this is really a wish list request more than a bug report; updating severity.

I'm also steadily becoming less convinced that the fixed-width semantics of GW are worth the candle.

It seems as easy to just tell people to use MINGW with its lower-bound semantics as it does to warn GW users that groff ms supports the register but gives a different meaning.

And it's not like groff ms even works in compatibility mode.  If someone has an ms document that they want to format with historical troff+ms and GNU troff+ms, they can write conditionals using \n(.g.  I'm not sure what they'd do if they wanted control of the gutter width in such a document, however.

In fact, I think I've talked myself out of wanting this.  Someone who has a use case for it can reopen this ticket or re-raise the matter on the discussion list.

G. Branden Robinson <gbranden>
Group administrator
Sat 01 May 2021 10:45:35 AM UTC, comment #1: 

Still need to determine whether the semantics of MINGW vs. GW are the same (probably not--the former is documented as a minimum and the other is not).

Also need to decide whether to do the aliasing anyway and simply document the semantic difference.

G. Branden Robinson <gbranden>
Group administrator
Tue 19 Jan 2021 04:44:53 AM UTC, original submission:  

Per discussion on the mailing list, it is worth researching the semantics of GW in V7 Unix troff and using that register name instead of the GNU extension MINGW for the same purpose.

MINGW can be retained as an alias of GW to avoid breaking documents written in the expectation that they'd be formatted with GNU ms.

See
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff/2020-12/msg00032.html
and its follow-ups
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff/2020-12/msg00035.html
and
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff/2020-12/msg00038.html .

G. Branden Robinson <gbranden>
Group administrator

 

(Note: upload size limit is set to 16384 kB, after insertion of the required escape characters.)

Attach Files:
   
   
Comment:
   

No files currently attached

 

Depends on the following items: None found

Items that depend on this one: None found

 

Carbon-Copy List
  • -email is unavailable- added by gbranden (Submitted the item)
  •  

    There are 0 votes so far. Votes easily highlight which items people would like to see resolved in priority, independently of the priority of the item set by tracker managers.

    Only logged-in users can vote.

     

    Follow 5 latest changes.

    Date Changed by Updated Field Previous Value => Replaced by
    2021-06-06 gbranden Severity3 - Normal 1 - Wish
        StatusNeed Info Rejected
        Assigned toNone gbranden
        Open/ClosedOpen Closed
    2021-05-01 gbranden StatusNone Need Info

    Back to the top

    Powered by Savane 3.13-02a9.
    Corresponding source code