Hi, Branden! On 3/20/22 10:36, G. Branden Robinson wrote: > At 2022-03-20T01:29:32+0100, Alejandro Colomar (man-pages) wrote: > Ralph's description, as I parse it, is correct. I'll speak to the > broader issue of documentation coverage of the matter. > >> Could you please improve the documentation regarding '"'? > > Yes, something about this should become part of groff(7). In > groff_man_style(7), I have restricted the discussion to advising people > to use the \(dq special character (also spellable as \[dq]).
Yes, but don't need to extend it too much. I also prefer the advise to use \(dq in general. This info would be useful especially for updating old documents, so it doesn't need to be very detailed. > > The issue _is_ discussed in the groff Texinfo manual. Here's the > relevant material from the groff 1.22.4 version. > Ahh, I never read groff's info pages :/ > > There is a kind of elegance to that; unfortunately, as our Texinfo > manual notes, the non-literal double quotes are removed in the process > of macro argument interpolation, so if one macro wraps another naïvely, > the result will be unfortunate. Okay. I'll fix it some day. > > I haven't checked yet, but I _think_ all *roffs that are actively > developed (so, ours, Heirloom Doctools's, and neatroff) make a point of > defining the `dq` special character. It baffles me that Kernighan > didn't establish this practice when making AT&T troff device-independent > in ~1979. Maybe some day if I ever get the chance, I'll ask him why. :) > > Does this help? Sure! Thanks, Alex -- Alejandro Colomar Linux man-pages comaintainer; https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/ http://www.alejandro-colomar.es/
