Re: [Groff] inconsistent synopsis for .MAILTO

[Werner LEMBERG]

> > I like this, but how will you make the last syntax form work?  My
> > suggestion is to have .LINK, .LINK-BEGIN and .LINK-END (or
> > something similar) -- it's very error-prone if .LINK can start and
> > end something at the same time.
>
> You just check the number of arguments.  Two arguments starts and
> ends an anchor.  One argument starts an anchor.  No arguments ends
> an anchor.  Or am I missing something?

With `work' I haven't meant the implementation itself but the
practical aspect of using it.  I simply don't like to have identical
names for starting and ending tags.

> I'm not a big fan of overloading, but if its good enough for the
> groff source, e.g.:
>
>       void *lookup(symbol s, void *v=0);
>       void *lookup(const char *);
>
> then its good enough for the macros.

You can't compare that.  Functions always have beginning and ending
tags, name `(' and `)'.  Besides this, there is a compiler who checks
everything.

> In the case of the macros, I'd argue that the overloading is good
> because then people have to devote fewer brain cells to remembering
> more keywords and do less typing for something that they may need to
> use on a daily basis.

Overloading *might* work.  More important is consistency -- if I have
a line-oriented macro foo, it's easy to remember that, say, <foo and
foo> start and end the block-oriented versions.


    Werner