Hi Branden, On Fri Dec 20, 2024 at 4:57 AM CET, G. Branden Robinson wrote: > At 2024-12-20T02:21:00+0100, onf wrote: > > I assume the reason for using the strings `lq` and `rq` instead of > > characters of the same name is that the strings can be defined > > differently based on the current locale, > > If so, that was pretty forward-looking for Berkeley in 1980. > > > so that English users get \[lq] and \[rq] while German users get \[Bq] > > and \[lq] etc. > > It's possible. I think another possibility is that someone was annoyed > by the way double quotation marks were spaced [...]
Okay, that sounds more plausible... > [...] Before the BSD > community decided upon the performative wokeness of rabid allergies to > copyleft and (at OpenBSD at least) C++. I kinda get where they are coming from with C++, though. Last time I tried patching groff, I was fascinated by the stark difference between groff's and neatroff's source code. The latter is just an order of magnitude easier to navigate and understand. That may be more a difference of coding style than the language itself, of course (just look at Heirloom troff for a counter-example), but I feel like the language also has an influence; for instance, the presence of objects, each with its own methods, definitely made groff's source code harder to navigate for me. ~ onf
