man.7: ffix

v2: Use heading markup that doesn't confuse Git.

The \c escape sequence works in an argument to a macro call that is part of a paragraph tag with font style alternation macros, but not the ordinary font macros B and I. This is because TP, B, and I all set up input traps; the six font style alternation macros do not.

The old formatting would, for some versions of some formatters, set the "[trailer]" text as part of the paragraph body, not the tag--like this.

.UE [trailer] Terminate the link text of the preceding .UR
macro, with the optional trailer (if present, usually a
(and so on)

This was a poorly understood--and undocumented--interaction of man(7) features until recently. Gory details involving nroff on Unix Version 7 (1979) running on a simulated PDP-11/45 are available.[1]

Here is a comparison of the former and new markup.

before
======
groff 1.22.3: BAD
groff 1.22.4: GOOD
groff 1.23.0: BAD
mandoc 1.14.6: BAD

now
===
groff 1.22.3: BAD
groff 1.22.4: GOOD
groff 1.23.0: GOOD
mandoc 1.14.6: GOOD

[1] https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?51468

    https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff/2022-06/msg00020.html

---
 man7/man.7 | 2 +-
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

index 258ce25da..583fe354f 100644
@@ -249,7 +249,7 @@ .SS Hypertext link macros
 .B .UE
 macro as the link text.
 .TP
-.B .UE \c
+.BR .UE \~\c
 .RI [ trailer ]
 Terminate the link text of the preceding
 .B .UR

2.30.2

Hi Branden,

This is part of the commit message. Since it's just context for comparing to v1, it's better to have it outside of the commit message. You could place it after the ---.

Patch applied. Thanks!

Here you can write things that shouldn't go in the commit message. Usually, comparison to vX.

Cheers,
Alex

<http://www.alejandro-colomar.es/>
GPG key fingerprint: A9348594CE31283A826FBDD8D57633D441E25BB5