[bug #65474] [troff] spurious "warning: unbalanced 'el' request" when formatting zic(8) from TZDB project

[Dave]

Follow-up Comment #25, bug #65474 (group groff):

[comment #22 comment #22:]
> Sure, but I'd like to do that once the 3 of us (you, me, and
> Paul) are on the same page, so that we aren't arguing any
> facts, just the advisability of future action.

👍

> Yours and Bjarni's claims in that ticket are, I fear, incorrect.
> The input proffered there *is* legal/valid, and moreover is
> interpreted the same in all tested AT&T and GNU _troff_s.

I guess it's legal in the sense that it has a well-defined behavior.  But it
certainly doesn't do what any reasonable reader would expect, and an
in-document condition being able to derail the parsing of flow-control
constructs is less than optimal.

> That is why I worked on bug #45502 before this one and *do*
> propose to change GNU _troff_ there to align with AT&T behavior.

OK.  That should fix the comment #11 discrepancy.  I don't see it affecting
the comment #0 one, as that contains no empty branches.

> The problem is that this warning is only _sometimes_ valid.

But that's the problem inherent in the logic used in bug #59434 being only
sometimes valid.  The warning alerts the user (certainly alerted me) that the
code isn't processed as expected.


    _______________________________________________________

Reply to this item at:

  <https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?65474>

_______________________________________________
Message sent via Savannah
https://savannah.gnu.org/