Re: bin/50680: man page for top(1) does not properly display default delay

[christos%zoulas.com@localhost (Christos Zoulas)]

On Jan 20,  7:40am, kre%munnari.OZ.AU@localhost (Robert Elz) wrote:
-- Subject: Re: bin/50680: man page for top(1) does not properly display defa

| The following reply was made to PR bin/50680; it has been noted by GNATS.
| 
| From: Robert Elz <kre%munnari.OZ.AU@localhost>
| To: gnats-bugs%NetBSD.org@localhost
| Cc: 
| Subject: Re: bin/50680: man page for top(1) does not properly display default delay
| Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2016 14:36:38 +0700
| 
|      Date:        Wed, 20 Jan 2016 03:15:00 +0000 (UTC)
|      From:        paul%whooppee.com@localhost
|      Message-ID:  <20160120031500.E9B547ACBA%mollari.NetBSD.org@localhost>
|  
|  
|    | 	Despite the setting of "register D" to 5 (with the .ar directive),
|  
|  You mean .nr I think, but I suspect that mandoc doesn't implement that at all.
|  
|    | 	when the man page renders '.af D 1' (in the description of the -s
|    | 	option), it generates nothing.
|  
|  I have no idea what the thought behind that was, but even in full blown
|  *roff, that wouldn't generate anything - ".af" sets the format of the
|  register given ('1' would indicate to print in the normal way that
|  integers are usually printed, as opposed to 'a' which prints a b c ...
|  for 1 2 3, or 'i' which prints i ii iii ... (or I for I II III))
|  But af just sets the format associated with the register, it doesn't
|  produce anything.
|  
|  For mandoc uses, the best that can probably be done at the minute would
|  be to revert top.1 to version 1.5 (and simply have it say "5" and ignore
|  register D completely).
|  
|  Better would be to fix mandoc to handle number & string registers, at least
|  for simple uses (.af might be going a bit overboard...) as that's how *roff
|  sources get to be parameterised (so the "5" can be defined once, and used
|  multiple times - essentially the combination of a variable, & a #define).

This is a regression in mandoc. I wrote the register handling code and
it used to work, until it got refactored. Please let upstream know.

christos