[self-correcting follow-up] At 2024-12-18T20:00:53-0600, G. Branden Robinson wrote: > Pro: > * People may discover that quotation marks are properly available in > the man(7) language, a fact that has been obscure for 45 years. > (The `\*(lq` and `\*(rq` syntax has been available since day one > [1979]. I suspect these failed because man page authors who weren't > already practiced in *roff had no idea what a *roff string was, or > how to interpolate one, and the elaborate syntax filled them with > fear.)
I forgot my own "History" section in groff_man(7).
>> `\*(lq` and `\*(rq` are extensions introduced by 4BSD (1980).
DWB 3.3 picked them up in one of its man(7) macro files ("an.sr") but
not the other ("an"). Solaris 10, a descendant of DWB 2.0, supports
them. SunOS 4.0.3 does as well but seems mostly to not use them, often
favoring `\(lq` and ``(rq` special character escape sequences (not
recognized by Ossanna troff) instead. But _both_ are scarce in its
corpus of man pages.
The thing just seems not to have ever really launched in the course of
44 years.
Surely I will succeed where others have failed.
Regards,
Branden
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