Hi Helge,

On Mon, Aug 25, 2025 at 04:05:55PM +0000, Helge Kreutzmann wrote:

Am Sun, Aug 24, 2025 at 09:17:17PM +0200 schrieb Alejandro Colomar:

quoted

Hi Helge,

On Sun, Aug 24, 2025 at 02:48:48PM +0000, Helge Kreutzmann wrote:

quoted

Without further ado, the following was found:

Issue 1:  I<putchar(c)> → B<putchar(>I<c>B<)>
Issue 2:  I<putc(c,\\ stdout)> → B<putc(>I<c>B<, >I<stdout>B<)>

"I<putchar(c)> is equivalent to I<putc(c,\\ stdout)>."

These are correct.  See man-pages(7):

       Expressions, if not written on a separate indented line,
       should be specified in italics.

Thanks for the pointer. I now see that sentence, but it doesn't make
sense. I believed the whole idea of this formatting was to give
meaning to the content, e.g. put variables in italices and "fixed"
strings in bold.

In general, I try to avoid these inlined expressions, and replace them
by indented ones, which don't go in italics (they have no formatting;
just monospaced).  I agree with the problem you mentioned, and think
that the solution is to try to avoid inlined expressions as much as is
sensible to do.

Rules like these also make translations harder, because translators
are not programmers, and guides like layed out in the previous
paragraphs really helped a lot doing good translations.

I guess at least for Linux man pages I stop reporting formatting
issues, as the rules are much more complex than I would like them to
be / than I tought.

No problem; this reports help realize when something is confusing for
readers.  Please continue reporting issues if you don't understand
something.


Cheers,
Alex

-- 
<https://www.alejandro-colomar.es/>