GNU bug report logs - #53977
Improve markup in man pages

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Package: coreutils;

Reported by: Mario Blättermann <mario.blaettermann <at> gmail.com>

Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2022 19:19:02 UTC

Severity: normal

Done: Pádraig Brady <P <at> draigBrady.com>

Bug is archived. No further changes may be made.

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Message #22 received at 53977 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Paul Eggert <eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu>
To: 53977 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Cc: P <at> draigBrady.com, mario.blaettermann <at> gmail.com
Subject: Re: bug#53977: Improve markup in man pages
Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2022 19:07:34 -0800
On 2/14/22 15:00, Pádraig Brady wrote:
> 
> I see Paul added the grep markup recently in a seemingly unrelated change:
> https://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=grep.git;a=commit;h=fe630c9f
In the old days man pages' SEE ALSO sections mostly didn't use markup 
for references to other man pages. I see only one exception in 7th 
edition UNIX (1979): its man page for yacc used ".IR lex (1)" instead of 
plain "lex(1)".

Nowadays it seems that ".BR lex (1)" is what's preferred for this sort 
of thing, so I've been switching to this style desultorily in man pages 
when someone points it out, most recently in diffutils today:

https://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=diffutils.git;a=commitdiff;h=dd9deb765548679e821be565229bb2e142d93573

As usual man pages are low priority for the GNU project. That being 
said, this sort of thing is an easy change.




This bug report was last modified 3 years and 97 days ago.

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