Re: style: .MR

[Humm]

Quoth Alejandro Colomar (man-pages):
> How would you use .MR on non-man[23] (e.g., man1) pages to refer to the
> same topic of the manual page?  I mean, how would you refer to groff(1)
> from within groff.1?
>
> .MR groff
> .MR groff 1
>
> ?
>
> If you omit the number, you get empty parentheses, which for man[23]
> pages looks good (they are functions, and that syntax looks good for
> them), but for commands, it looks weird.

For functions, although perhaps looking fine, it’s semantically wrong.  
The parentheses when referring to a function approximate its parameter 
or argument list.  Man page references, and thus uses of .MR, always 
include a number.

> And if you specify the
> section, you're a bit repetitive (but that's better than nothing).  And
> then there's the option of using .B, or .I, but as we know, there's no
> consensus on which of them should be used.

If you really want to refer to the man page itself, you can use wording 
like q.v.  If you want to refer to the thing described, you can fight 
for a consensus by using the one and only correct .I.  (Or .MR could be 
changed with only one or an empty second argument to not emit 
parentheses.)

--
Humm