After some constructive criticism from pjanzen@ and some e-mail tag:

   - only use the .Dv NULL form when referring explicitly to a function
     argument or return value
   - otherwise, use these forms:
        o non-null
        o null-terminated (hyphenated form for predicate adjective)
        o else, null terminated, or null terminate, whichever the case
        o null pointer, null byte, null string, etc.
   - may use NUL to refer to an ASCII NUL, but it doesn't need a .Tn macro

In general, capitalizing the word "null" everywhere is unnecessary and makes
the man pages harder to read. The above is consistent with popular programming
texts (i.e., K&R, Stevens).

1 files changed, 13 insertions, 8 deletions

diff --git a/lib/libc/gen/vis.3 b/lib/libc/gen/vis.3
index 663355c95d3..aa2de9df014 100644
--- a/lib/libc/gen/vis.3
+++ b/lib/libc/gen/vis.3
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-.\"	$OpenBSD: vis.3,v 1.6 1999/05/29 22:38:37 aaron Exp $
+.\"	$OpenBSD: vis.3,v 1.7 1999/06/04 01:30:12 aaron Exp $
 .\"
 .\" Copyright (c) 1989, 1991, 1993
 .\"	The Regents of the University of California.  All rights reserved.
@@ -58,14 +58,16 @@ a string which represents the character
 If
 .Fa c
 needs no encoding, it is copied in unaltered.  The string is
-NUL-terminated and a pointer to the end of the string is
+null terminated and a pointer to the end of the string is
 returned.  The maximum length of any encoding is four
 characters (not including the trailing NUL);
 thus, when
 encoding a set of characters into a buffer, the size of the buffer should
 be four times the number of characters encoded, plus one for the trailing
 NUL.
-The flag parameter is used for altering the default range of
+The
+.Fa flag
+parameter is used for altering the default range of
 characters considered for encoding and for altering the visual
 representation.
 The additional character,
@@ -95,8 +97,8 @@ function encodes exactly
 characters from
 .Fa src
 (this
-is useful for encoding a block of data that may contain NUls).
-Both forms NUL-terminate
+is useful for encoding a block of data that may contain NULs).
+Both forms null terminate
 .Fa dst .
 The size of
 .Fa dst
@@ -105,8 +107,9 @@ of characters encoded from
 .Fa src
 (plus one for the NUL).
 Both
-forms return the number of characters in dst (not including
-the trailing NUL.
+forms return the number of characters in
+.Fa dst
+(not including the trailing NUL).
 .Pp
 The encoding is a unique, invertible representation composed entirely of
 graphic characters; it can be decoded back into the original form using 
@@ -220,7 +223,9 @@ The following sequences are used to represent the indicated characters:
 .Li \e0 Tn  - NUL No (000)
 .Ed
 .Pp
-When using this format, the nextc parameter is looked at to determine
+When using this format, the
+.Fa nextc
+parameter is looked at to determine
 if a NUL character can be encoded as
 .Ql \e0
 instead of