Re: [patch] Add new Text decoration .Brx

[David Hill]

Hi Ingo,

On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 12:30:50PM +0200, Ingo Schwarze wrote:
>Hi David,
>
>David Hill wrote on Thu, Aug 09, 2012 at 02:26:39PM -0400:
>
>> Attached is a diff to add a new Text decoration, .Brx, for Bitrig,
>> an OpenBSD fork.
>
>I object.
>
>These macros (.Ux, .At, .Bx, .Bsx, .Nx, .Fx, .Ox, .Dx) are nothing but
>legacy cruft, serve no real purpose, and just clutter the global
>namespace.  There *may* have been a certain point in .Ux back in the
>80th to give the UNIX trademark a certain font and size - but using
>just .Tm UNIX would have served the same purpose with less clutter.
>For things like NetBSD and OpenBSD it's completely pointless, there is
>no need to format these names in any special way.  And even if there
>were, these macros would seem exceedingly ill-designed.  If at all,
>people should have designed one formatting macro taking the system
>name as an argument, not one gratuitious macro per system.

Ahh, well, if these macros are legacy, then forgot this whole diff :)  I
was unaware.

>
>I do not propose to deprecate these macros; they exist for a long time
>and deprecating stuff is usually a bother.  But i'd definitely rather
>deprecate them than add yet another one.  Hell, i'd rather spend the
>time to scour our whole tree myself and remove this cruft everywhere
>than having yet another one added, even though that would mean several
>days of work, i guess.
>
>On top of that, the proposal is premature.  Bitrig didn't even see
>any release yet.  The website says:
>
>  We are in the process of getting our first public release ready.
>  Please be patient and check back often to see where we are at.
>  The plan is to have something available for public consumption
>  by the end of June 2012.
>
>Well, apparently, it didn't happen.  The project doesn't appear to
>be quite on track even by its own standards.  So even if anybody
>feels we should try to fill the namespace with such macros,
>i'd say for now, let's get some popcorn, sit back and watch.
>
>Yours,
>  Ingo