Re: [groff] A few issues with mom's LIST macros

[Ulrich Lauther]

On Sun, Nov 26, 2017 at 06:31:42PM -0500, Peter Schaffter wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 26, 2017, Ulrich Lauther wrote:
> > why do we have to use "ROMAN<n>" and not "ROMAN <n>", which would be easier 
> > to process? 
> > Historical reasons?
> 
> Yep. :)  
> 
> Truth is, I wrote the macro so long ago that I can't recall what
> advantage I saw in postfixing the digit.  As a user, do you see an
> advantage to making the second form available, too?  If so, it's a
> no-brainer to implement.  I can take care of it before pushing your
> patch.
> 
No, as a user not really. It is just against the principle of least 
astonishment.
Keeping both forms would make the code even more complicated and abolishing
the current form would hurt users who used it in the past.
Reminds me of a story about the make-program where supposedly
the necessity to use a tab instead of blanks for indentation could not
be abolished because there were allready three users.
Probably an urban legend.

Best
        ulrich