Content:
* Document that the command has a default file list.
* Demote "COMMANDS" section to "Operations" subsection. The former term
is (1) too easily confused with Unix commands and (2) not a widely
used section heading in man pages.
Style:
* Italicize command names.
* Italicize file names.
* Use idiomatic man page cross references.
* Present operation and option letters in alphabetical order.
* Render option descriptions as full sentences.
* Set bug list as a bulleted list.
Markup:
* Break input lines at sentence boundaries.
* Favor use of man(7) font selection and alternation macros over roff(7)
font selection escape sequences.
* Drop numerous extraneous paragraphing macro calls. See subsection
"Horizontal and vertical spacing" of groff_man(7).
* Replace use of *roff requests to break lines and vertically space with
calls of paragraphing macros, which is what they're for. Two things
the page author didn't know: `.sp 1` already implies a break, so the
preceding `.br` was redundant. `.sp 1` without an argument already
means to vertically space by 1 vee; that is, the "1" argument was
superfluous. It was a bad idea anyway because the default
inter-paragraph spacing in man(7) is not one vee, but 0.4v--this
matters when typesetting. It has also been the case since 1979.
* Use `RS` and `RE` macros instead of a literal tab to achieve a
relative inset. Use of the macros is more idiomatic.
* Use `EX` and `EE` to attempt to set the examples in a monospaced font
family. These are extensions and are silently ignored by formatters
that don't support them.
groff_man(7):
.EX
.EE Begin and end example. After .EX, filling is disabled and a
constant‐width (monospaced) font is selected. Calling .EE
enables filling and restores the previous font.
.EX and .EE are extensions introduced in Ninth Edition Unix.
Documenter’s Workbench, Heirloom Doctools, and Plan 9
troffs, and mandoc (since 1.12.2) also support them.
Solaris troff does not. See subsection “Use of extensions”
in groff_man_style(7).
* Kill off useless trailing space on input line.
Follow Unix idioms and the guidelines presented in groff_man_style(7).[1]
* Present multiple synopses since the command has multiple operation
modes accessed via mutually inexpressible command letters. See the
POSIX standard for copious precedent.
* Stop implying that file name arguments are accepted alongside the `I`
option; see line 236 of util/dlb_main.c.
* Stop spacing around synopsis punctuation where unnecessary.
* Set metasyntactic variables (parameters) in italics, not roman or
bold.
* Spell ellipsis idiomatically for pleasant typesetting.
* Use `\c` escape sequence to force adjacency of tar-like option letters
to the mandatory operation letter.
* Use singular, not plural, for repeatable argument. The ellipsis does
the grammatical work of pluralization for us.
[1] Full disclosure: I wrote much of (the current form of) that man page.
Portions of these man pages seem at one time to have been dynamically
selected, but the mechanism for doing so appears to be commented out in
the source tree: see "NHGREP" in sys/{unix,vms}/Makefile.doc.
Wrap them in *roff "ignore blocks" to keep their noise from cluttering
the man page actually seen by the users.
To update, run "perl DEVEL/nhgitset.pl"
Fixes:
- "nhcommit -a" has been fixed
- NHDT was hardwired in places
- no longer complain about a missing dat directory outside of the
NetHack source tree
- make update of gitinfo atomic
- Replace some hardwired directory separators with OS-dependent constructs
Backwards Incompatibilities:
- NH_DATESUB's DATE() is now Date() to match the other variables
- MSYS2 requires an additional Perl package - the MSYS2 docs have
been updated
New Help System:
- git nhhelp
This command mirrors "git help" for nh* commands.
- See git nhhelp nhsub for general help on substitution variables
New Substitution Variables:
-Brev()
An aBREViation of $PREFIX-Branch$:$PREFIX-Revision$ - this
may help get line length under control in file headers.
-Assert(TYPE=VALUE)
If TYPE does not match VALUE, do not substitute on this line.
TYPE P checks VALUE against nethack.substprefix
-Project(arg)
Returns nethack.projectname if there is no arg and an uppercase
version if arg is uc.
Other New Features:
- Add nethack.projectname
- Documentation updates - see "git nhhelp nhsub"
- On checkout or merge of a branch, check for nhgitset version updates
and provide an optional message to the user.
- Move NH_DATESUB substitutions here from cron job to keep dates in sync
- PREFIX-* keywords now available in NH_DATESUB templates
- Support use of nhgitset.pl from a different repo; note that update
checks will be dependent on keeping the original source repo up-to-date
and in the same location.
