Re: [groff] Regularize (sub)section cross references.

[John Gardner]

*> How does the importance of that compare to the trouble caused for screen
readers etc.?*

Heh. It doesn't. =) Put simply, if you're searching for human text in
prose, you'll almost always want a case-insensitive search.

Amusing sidenote: A screen-reader would read ".Sh" as "Ssssh...", which
would actually make ".Sh" ".It" pretty concerning. ;-)

You can get around this by using <abbr>.Sh</abbr>; a title attribute
needn't be included if all you care about is having it pronounced
letter-by-letter. So <abbr title="Section heading">.Sh</abbr> isn't
necessary.




On Mon, 17 Dec 2018 at 07:56, Ingo Schwarze <address@hidden> wrote:

> Hi John,
>
> John Gardner wrote on Mon, Dec 17, 2018 at 07:25:00AM +1100:
> > Tadziu Hoffmann wrote:
>
> >> or perhaps it was considered but consciously rejected because
> >> situations existed where it would be detrimental?
>
> > It could have been to make sections more conspicuous in text editors,
>
> Certainly not.  The editor in v3 and v4 was ed(1).
> Even ex(1) did not exist at the time.
>
> > making it easier for the author to spot sections when skimming a file.
> > Doubt there was any syntax highlighting back then... =)
>
> Syntax highlighting six years before the invention of vi(1)?
> That's indeed a funny idea!
>
> > Plus it's easier to search for a section name
>
> The more(1) command first appeared in 3.0BSD.
> That is another year *after* vi(1).
>
> No, those can't possibly be the reasons.  :-)
>
> I suspect that in 1973, developers consulted printed manuals rather
> than reading them at the terminal, simply because the terminal was
> a real line printing terminal and the machine didn't have a CRT
> yet.  Even the first two machines i practiced programming on only
> had LED (not LCD!) single-line displays and didn't have CRTs yet.
>
> > if you know in advance it'll always be in uppercase, which I guess
> > spares you the effort of remembering to do a case-sensitive search
> > in vi or whatever...
>
> That may be worth considering today, though.  How does the importance
> of that compare to the trouble caused for screen readers etc.?
>
> I tend to think it is not that important even today, so the main
> tradeoff remains (editing effort + overcoming people's inertia)
> vs. (less trouble for screen readers + nicer typography).
>
> Yours,
>   Ingo
>