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-rw-r--r--share/man/man7/mdoc.728
1 files changed, 20 insertions, 8 deletions
diff --git a/share/man/man7/mdoc.7 b/share/man/man7/mdoc.7
index f46b578a174..b7c33de3f4e 100644
--- a/share/man/man7/mdoc.7
+++ b/share/man/man7/mdoc.7
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
-.\" $OpenBSD: mdoc.7,v 1.146 2016/12/28 17:21:17 schwarze Exp $
+.\" $OpenBSD: mdoc.7,v 1.147 2017/01/09 14:10:18 schwarze Exp $
.\"
.\" Copyright (c) 2009, 2010, 2011 Kristaps Dzonsons <kristaps@bsd.lv>
-.\" Copyright (c) 2010, 2011, 2013 Ingo Schwarze <schwarze@openbsd.org>
+.\" Copyright (c) 2010, 2011, 2013-2017 Ingo Schwarze <schwarze@openbsd.org>
.\"
.\" Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any
.\" purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above
@@ -15,7 +15,7 @@
.\" ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF
.\" OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.
.\"
-.Dd $Mdocdate: December 28 2016 $
+.Dd $Mdocdate: January 9 2017 $
.Dt MDOC 7
.Os
.Sh NAME
@@ -1843,14 +1843,25 @@ The
list is the most complicated.
Its syntax is as follows:
.Pp
-.D1 Pf \. Sx \&It Ar cell Op <TAB> Ar cell ...
.D1 Pf \. Sx \&It Ar cell Op Sx \&Ta Ar cell ...
+.D1 Pf \. Sx \&It Ar cell Op <TAB> Ar cell ...
.Pp
The arguments consist of one or more lines of text and macros
representing a complete table line.
-Cells within the line are delimited by tabs or by the special
+Cells within the line are delimited by the special
.Sx \&Ta
-block macro.
+block macro or by literal tab characters.
+.Pp
+Using literal tabs is strongly discouraged because they are very
+hard to use correctly and
+.Nm
+code using them is very hard to read.
+In particular, a blank character is syntactically significant
+before and after the literal tab character.
+If a word precedes or follows the tab without an intervening blank,
+that word is never interpreted as a macro call, but always output
+literally.
+.Pp
The tab cell delimiter may only be used within the
.Sx \&It
line itself; on following lines, only the
@@ -1865,9 +1876,10 @@ Note that quoted strings may span tab-delimited cells on an
line.
For example,
.Pp
-.Dl .It \(dqcol1 ; <TAB> col2 ;\(dq \&;
+.Dl .It \(dqcol1 ,\& <TAB> col2 ,\(dq \&;
.Pp
-will preserve the semicolon whitespace except for the last.
+will preserve the whitespace before both commas,
+but not the whitespace before the semicolon.
.Pp
See also
.Sx \&Bl .