Re: man page portability (was: [PATCH 4/9] man/clear.1: Migrate macro usage conventions.)

[G. Branden Robinson]

[self-follow-up]

At 2023-10-03T19:12:07-0500, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> At any rate, I have a much simpler proposed revision to clear(1).  It
> still punches through the floor to `nf`, `fi`, and `ft` requests in a
> minor way but (a) should achieve the desired formatting on AT&T
> nroff/troff (except for C/A/T output with Unix Version 7 troff); and (b)
> uses `EX`/`EE` macros where the implementation supports them
> already, doing only harmlessly redundant things.
> 
> I'll post that separately.

Actually, this got even simpler, because I forgot something.

Even DWB 3.3 troff, my proxy for System V Unix troff, supports
`EX`/`EE`.  That means I no longer have ready access to a formatter
(apart from Unix Version 7 troff on a simulated PDP-11) that _doesn't_
support these macros).

Not only did I fail to read Ingo's mandoc_roff(7) documentation, I
failed to read/recollect my own.  :-|

groff_man(7):

       .EX
       .EE    Begin and end example.  After .EX, filling is disabled and
              a constant‐width (monospaced) font is selected.  Calling
              .EE enables filling and restores the previous font.

              These macros are extensions introduced in Ninth Edition
              Research Unix.  Systems running that troff, or those from
              Documenter’s Workbench, Heirloom Doctools, or Plan 9 troff
              support them.  To be certain your page will be portable to
              systems that do not, copy their definitions from the
              an-ext.tmac file of a groff installation.

So I now feel it's better to just assume these macros are available.  If
someone using a system that _doesn't_ support them pipes up, I'd be
inclined to take a stab at Ingo's approach where we use Autoconf to
detect the fact, and make/sed to inline definitions for them into the
man page documents only if necessary.

Regards,
Branden

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