I went to see what this proposal meant and ran into undefined jargon
in groff_char.7. Yes, info groff probably tells me more than I want to
know. Still, I expect the man page to be terse, but intelligible.
What's an "entity"? Fortunately, Dave Kemper's post shed light on
this question.
The first use of .char that came to mind was
.char \[ntilde] \o'n~'
which would collide badly with the following ancient trick for
unbreakable, unpaddable space. (Ignore the question of whether the
tilde at hand is usable as a diacritical.)
.tr ~
a~b~c
This, I guess, is typical of the motivation for the change.
Suppose the change isn't made? What does .char do for you that .ds
doesn't? Certainly nothing essential in the example above. However, it
can avoid the ugliness of string invocations.
I regard the potential benefit mentioned in the last sentence as
unpersuasive, but the potential catastrophe of the initial example as
tilting the scales toward the proposal. .
Doug
