From: Douglas McIlroy <douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu>
To: Alejandro Colomar <alx.manpages@gmail.com>
Cc: Michael Haardt <michael@moria.de>,
Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org>,
Ingo Schwarze <schwarze@usta.de>,
"G. Branden Robinson" <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com>,
linux-man <linux-man@vger.kernel.org>,
groff@gnu.org, Andries Brouwer <Andries.Brouwer@cwi.nl>,
Michael Kerrisk <mtk.manpages@gmail.com>,
"Andries E. Brouwer" <aeb@cwi.nl>
Subject: Re: Ping^1: Chapters of the manual (was: Bug#1018737: /usr/bin/rst2man: rst2man: .TH 5th field shouldn't be empty)
Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2022 19:34:22 -0500 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAKH6PiUtvmbua0F_qCdR92fJfpiabMPg=6Lc1fguLUYE9CC0xQ@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <59fb70b0-f4b7-d257-117e-767135fa39c3@gmail.com>
A nice property of "section" is that it's recursive--applies to any
level of a hierarchy--so you don't have to struggle to keep
level-specific terminology straight.
Doug
On Sun, Dec 11, 2022 at 2:21 PM Alejandro Colomar
<alx.manpages@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Michael,
>
> On 12/11/22 20:05, Michael Haardt wrote:
> > I just checked what is easily available to me: >
> > v7 calls them sections in intro pages, but chapters in man(1) and man(7).
> >
> > Celerity Computing UNIX (looks like a BSD port) calls them sections in
> > intro pages and man(7), but chapter in manv(7) (dtroff version of man(7)).
> >
> > SunOS 4.1.1 calls them sections everywhere.
> >
> > HP-UX 11.11 calls them sections everywhere.
>
> Thanks for checking!
>
> >
> > Given the changes it looks like you are not the first person to note an
> > inconsistency here, but I see a majority calling them sections and
> > getting rid of the term chapter over time.
>
> It seems like a regression to me. The old term was, at least in terms of
> ambiguity, better.
>
> Do we need to fix a decades-old regression in the manual pages? Well, _need_ is
> a strong word for that.
>
> >
> > Now all of the above is commercially obsolete by now and Linux
> > dominates, but I don't see a good reason to break an established term
> > and instead suggest to follow the above and s/chapter/section/g.
>
> Admittedly, it's hard to defend my proposal as _necessary_. Especially after
> the world has lived for decades with the ambiguity of having chapters as
> sections and sections also as... sections.
>
> I have several times had to come up with imaginative ways to disambiguate the
> term section. Am I a corner case that has to live with that ambiguity way more
> than the average programmer? Quite likely.
>
> Since I'll some day (likely for 6.02, that's 2 years from now) be publishing the
> Linux man-pages as a single-volume PDF, the term chapter will regain significance.
>
> IMO, there's undoubtedly a reason to fix the regression, and reform the old
> term. However, the reason is not very strong, so it all depends on reaching an
> agreement with all of man-db, mandoc(1), and groff(1). That would probably have
> the side-effect that we also have agreement with OpenBSD. That would be a large
> subset of the relevant parties.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Alex
>
> --
> <http://www.alejandro-colomar.es/>
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2022-12-12 0:34 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 31+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
[not found] <20220906191320.447t5awx3rcb5d5b@illithid>
[not found] ` <a7b8c6b3-a8e8-6ab7-6cf4-118446849a9c@gmail.com>
[not found] ` <dca0e251-7481-7f1e-4077-0ddee070a357@gmail.com>
[not found] ` <20220906204245.hzhq2s7yha6zzgrh@illithid>
[not found] ` <30e80fe0-f0ce-d6cd-ee40-28692e5a5f82@gmail.com>
[not found] ` <5c1e8620-e4ff-c79a-1d4e-11f797276726@gmail.com>
[not found] ` <20221116234049.GA1229865@if>
[not found] ` <f306a83a-306d-e3d0-5d25-bf07da3da59f@gmail.com>
2022-11-17 0:28 ` Chapters of the manual (was: Bug#1018737: /usr/bin/rst2man: rst2man: .TH 5th field shouldn't be empty) Alejandro Colomar
2022-12-11 16:40 ` Ping^1: " Alejandro Colomar
2022-12-11 19:05 ` Michael Haardt
2022-12-11 19:21 ` Alejandro Colomar
2022-12-11 21:10 ` Michael Haardt
2022-12-12 0:34 ` Douglas McIlroy [this message]
2022-12-12 11:39 ` Alejandro Colomar
2022-12-12 8:58 ` Ralph Corderoy
2022-12-12 13:19 ` G. Branden Robinson
2022-12-12 13:57 ` Andries E. Brouwer
2022-12-12 13:39 ` Colin Watson
2022-12-12 13:48 ` Alejandro Colomar
[not found] ` <1719285.QkHrqEjB74@pip>
[not found] ` <01989003-349f-fb6b-f460-89106b82bc34@gmail.com>
[not found] ` <2176657.1BCLMh4Saa@pip>
2022-12-17 11:51 ` Ping^1: " Alejandro Colomar
2022-12-17 13:19 ` [BUG] gropdf, tbl: Completely broken table (was: Ping^1: Chapters of the manual (was: Bug#1018737: ...)) Alejandro Colomar
2022-12-17 16:08 ` G. Branden Robinson
2022-12-17 21:26 ` Deri
2022-12-18 11:25 ` Alejandro Colomar
2022-12-18 5:49 ` [BUG] gropdf, tbl: Completely broken table Ralph Corderoy
2022-12-18 11:01 ` Alejandro Colomar
2022-12-18 11:46 ` [BUG] gropdf, tbl: Completely broken table (was: Ping^1: Chapters of the manual (was: Bug#1018737: ...)) Alejandro Colomar
2022-12-19 5:32 ` groff 1.23.0.rc2 status report (was: [BUG] gropdf, tbl: Completely broken table) G. Branden Robinson
2022-12-19 12:58 ` Deri
2022-12-19 16:39 ` Alejandro Colomar
2022-12-19 16:59 ` patching suffixes(7) (was: groff 1.23.0.rc2 status report) G. Branden Robinson
2022-12-19 19:10 ` Alejandro Colomar
2022-12-19 19:54 ` prehistory branch (was: patching suffixes(7) (was: groff 1.23.0.rc2 status report)) Alejandro Colomar
2022-12-19 20:05 ` Alejandro Colomar
2022-12-20 3:40 ` patching suffixes(7) (was: groff 1.23.0.rc2 status report) G. Branden Robinson
2022-12-20 10:12 ` Alejandro Colomar
2022-12-19 16:51 ` groff 1.23.0.rc2 status report (was: [BUG] gropdf, tbl: Completely broken table) G. Branden Robinson
2022-12-17 21:37 ` Ping^1: Chapters of the manual (was: Bug#1018737: /usr/bin/rst2man: rst2man: .TH 5th field shouldn't be empty) Deri
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to='CAKH6PiUtvmbua0F_qCdR92fJfpiabMPg=6Lc1fguLUYE9CC0xQ@mail.gmail.com' \
--to=douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu \
--cc=Andries.Brouwer@cwi.nl \
--cc=aeb@cwi.nl \
--cc=alx.manpages@gmail.com \
--cc=cjwatson@debian.org \
--cc=g.branden.robinson@gmail.com \
--cc=groff@gnu.org \
--cc=linux-man@vger.kernel.org \
--cc=michael@moria.de \
--cc=mtk.manpages@gmail.com \
--cc=schwarze@usta.de \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
This is an external index of several public inboxes,
see mirroring instructions on how to clone and mirror
all data and code used by this external index.