[bug #57720] mandoc.tmac: Missing definition of some strings

[Ingo Schwarze]

Follow-up Comment #2, bug #57720 (project groff):

Bjarni wrote:

> troff: <mandoc_char.7>:730: warning: macro 'R' not defined

Cannot reproduce either.  Then, even if it were reproducible, it would totally
be a non-issue because the context these user-defined strings are expanded in
is explaining that their portability is dubious, recommending against their
use.  So it would be just fine if they weren't portable to groff.

Branden wrote:

> I see many things to make me cringe

Admitted.  There are some things that can be improved, for example the totally
wrong .PP macros in the middle of tables.  Some decisions are deliberate, for
exacple the ample use of font escapes rather than font macros.  The reason is
that writing font alternating macros is easy enough for humans and looks good,
but hard and error-prone in auto-generation.  Font escapes are hard to write
for humans and look ugly, but easy to generate automatically and reliably
portable, and portability is the only point here.

The mdoc_man.c module required very little maintenance during the last decade
and is needed even less nowadays than it was years ago.  That means some
decisions may be outdated now.  Bitrot.

> the generated source document remains miles ahead
> of most auto-generated output I've seen generated by other tools

Thanks.

> Please file it against mandoc

Done, added to the mandoc TODO file, see below.
That is, not Bjarnis invalid complaint, of course, but the real bug that
Branden found.

https://cvsweb.bsd.lv/~checkout~/mandoc/TODO?rev=HEAD

************************************************************************
* bugs: invalid output
************************************************************************

- wrong number of layout columns in tbl(7) code generated by -T man
  https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?57720
  The reason likely is that tbl(7) does not support the .Bl -column
  feature of not explicitly specifying the last table column.
  loc **  exist *  algo **  size *  imp ***

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