Re: [BUG] "\fC" macro in ox-man.el [9.6.15 (release_9.6.15 @ /usr/share/emacs/29.2/lisp/org/)]

[Lennart Jablonka]

[replying to two messages]

Quoth onf:
> On Sat Jan 4, 2025 at 7:37 AM CET, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> > At 2025-01-04T01:23:02+0100, onf wrote:
> […]
> > > My impression of Plan 9's troff is that it's a poorly maintained
> > > descendant of DWB troff that's used only to format manpages.

It’s not only used to format man pages: It’s also used to format 
volume 2 of the manual; i.e., the papers in /sys/doc are formatted 
by troff.  The papers at the state of the fourth edition’s 
abandonment (2015) is at https://9p.io/sys/doc/index.html ; see, 
for example, the https://9p.io/sys/doc/troff.pdf linked thence.

Beside /sys/doc and /sys/man, the International Workshop on
Plan 9¹ accepts papers written in -ms.  And I know of at least one 
person who wrote some sort of thesis for a degree using troff on 
9front.  (Said thesis was on Plan 9.)

Troff on 9front is not used very much to format man pages not 
written for Plan 9.  It sometimes is, but not very often.  There 
was no need to import -mdoc yet, for example.

> > I wouldn't say _poorly_ maintained; its commit rate seems to match or
> > even exceed its defect rate.  This could illustrate (1) low adoption or
> > (2) adequacy for the (limited?) purposes to which people apply it. [...]
>
> Which commit rate are you referring to? I thought the official sources
> are at https://plan9.io/sources/plan9/sys/src/cmd/troff/ ... or maybe
> you meant the 9front version?

Yes, the sources there are the last sources of Plan 9 as 
distributed by Bell Labs.  It was abandoned in 2015 and is now 
dead.  Beside that, there is the commit rate of plan9port and that 
of 9front.

I don’t care for plan9port.  I do care about 9front.

Per my understanding, troff on Plan 9 (and thus 9front and 
plan9port) is just bwk’s continuation of troff.  The Unix system 
would have been replaced by Plan 9 with bwk continuing developing 
troff like nothing happened, only now on Plan 9 instead of on v10.

Yes, there are few changes to troff on 9front.  I remember fixing 
a little defect.  If anything, it might get replaced by Neatroff 
at some point.

Quoth G. Branden Robinson:
> I'd like to see an attempt at reconstructing DWB 3.4 from the existing
> DWB 3.3 code base (made portable) and an old snapshot of Plan 9, maybe
> circa 2000.  It'd be good to have a plausible exhibit of the end of the
> line for AT&T Unix troff--what the body looked like at the murder scene.

You can find old versions of Plan 9 at the website of the 
“Plan 9 Foundation”: https://p9f.org/dl/index.html .  The troff 
sources are in /sys/src/cmd/troff.  I doubt they changed very much 
in the last 30 years.

> > > Poor, in general.  Where Courier bold-italic existed, it was
> > > sometimes called "CX".
> >
> > I meant support for CB and CI, not CBI.
>
> Also poor, outside of the horizon I previously articulated.  :(
>
> System V Unix supported these names _only_ on the "aps" device
> (Autologic APS-5).  Plan 9 doesn't.  DWB 3.3 doesn't.
>
> The "aps" device on Solaris 10 troff supports CB but not CI.

Plan 9 does have those names.  It has all of C, CO, and CW for 
Courier and CI, CB, and CX for Courier-{Oblique,Bold,BoldOblique}.

¹ The website is at https://iwp9.org/ , the last proceedings at 
https://10e.iwp9.org/10iwp9proceedings.pdf .  The papers with the 
usual, traditional, ugly -ms extra half-inch at the right were set 
with troff.