Re: Using tbl(1) for structure definitions

[Ingo Schwarze]

Hi Alejandro,

Alejandro Colomar wrote on Fri, Aug 12, 2022 at 05:58:32PM +0200:

> Since I'm not 100% convinced by any of the ways to format structure 
> definitions in SYNOPSIS, I'm going to go for the status quo.  Since 
> there weren't any structure definitions (at least that I know of) in 
> SYNOPSIS before my introduction, I'll go for what was used in 
> DESCRIPTIONs.  That is embedding them in EX/EE, which uses monospace, 
> which allows me to align perfectly with spaces in any output device.

I consider that a good choice.

> I hope nobody will consider this very harmful.

While .EX may not be perfectly portable (being a v9+GNU extension),
i agree it is useful enough that using it often makes sense.
Btw., Branden sometimes asks for man(7) extensions that i do not
vilify; this is one.  :)

Besides, even if a formatter does not implement it (which won't
happen for many formatters), no content is lost.  Indentation is
lost in that case, but that's not a very serious problem because
C is not Pathon and line breaks and indentation do not matter for
C syntax and semantics.

> Still, I'm interested in your discussion about the best way to show 
> structured data like this, and the possible 
> portability/readability/accessibility issues of each alternative, so 
> this is just a temporary solution until we agree on something better (if 
> it exists).

I'm not sure whether a better way exists.  Maybe, maybe not.
Certainly tbl(1) isn't part of it.

Yours,
  Ingo