bugGNU roff - Bugs: bug #60701, [man, mm, ms] should have...

 
 

bug #60701: [man, mm, ms] should have quotation macros

Submitter:  G. Branden Robinson <gbranden>
Submitted:  Sun 30 May 2021 02:32:23 AM UTC
   
 
Category:  Macro - others/general Severity:  1 - Wish
Item Group:  Feature change Status:  None
Privacy:  Public Assigned to:  None
Open/Closed:  Open Planned Release:  None
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Thu 18 Aug 2022 12:02:37 PM UTC, comment #1: 

mdoc has them.  Why not man(7) too?

G. Branden Robinson <gbranden>
Group administrator
Sun 30 May 2021 02:32:23 AM UTC, original submission:  

These packages' lack of quotation macros, like man(7)'s, is probably a legacy of AT&T's commitment to ` and ' as paired directional single quotes in the Teletype and C/A/T era and the seeming rapid denouement of troff development there after Kernighan added device independence.

This legacy was not justifiable in the ISO 8859 character set and Adobe Glyph List era and is indefensible today.

` and ' in input are suitable only for use as directional single quotes, and even then we should discourage them because (1) they look asymmetric and ugly in the input; and (2) if people repeat them for directional double quotes, following the ubiquitous example of TeX, they will get incorrect spacing on nroff devices.

At the same time, the various special character escapes for quotation marks (see groff_char(7)) are cumbersome to type.

Moreover, applying macros to this purpose permits semantic uplift.

mdoc(7) has done some good work in this area.  We should consider something in the same spirit.

The foregoing might apply to me(7) as well; I haven't looked yet.  I feel sure that mom(7) already has it covered.

G. Branden Robinson <gbranden>
Group administrator

 

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    Follows 1 latest change.

    Date Changed by Updated Field Previous Value => Replaced by
    2022-08-18 gbranden Summary[mm, ms] should have quotation macros [man, mm, ms] should have quotation macros

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