On Mon, Feb 17, 2003 at 09:34:54AM -0500, Greg A. Woods wrote:
> [ On Monday, February 17, 2003 at 12:47:32 (+0100), Thomas Klausner wrote: ]
> > Subject: Re: groff update?
> >
> > So for the switch to happen, we'd need to do two things:
> > a) teach the new mdoc package the .Nm "" syntax
> 
> No, that's bogus.  Leaving it as it is the only right thing to do.  The
> new mdoc package should never learn the broken syntax -- the groff folks
> are 100% correct about this.

Have you heard about "backwards compatibility"?
For example, when you still want to view unmodified NetBSD-1.3.1 man pages
correctly on NetBSD-2.0 systems.

> > b) teach the old mdoc package the .Nm . syntax, and pull it up to
> >    the branches
> > Step b is not so important
> 
> It's only unimportant if you really don't care that -current users will
> have broken manual pages for the time it takes to elide the bogus usage
> from them.  I personally wouldn't care, but....

As I said, they would be fixed at the time of the import.
I can take care of that, it's pretty automatic.

> If instead you teach the old mdoc about ".Nm ." then you can fix all the
> old uage and once it's all fixed then you can upgrade the mdoc package
> and hopefully nothing will be broken for anyone.

I prefer that solution too. It doesn't address all problems, though, see above.

 Thomas