On Tue, Jul 16, 2013 at 12:36:32AM +0200, J??r??mie Courr??ges-Anglas wrote: > >> > >> Fl may seem wrong because we're talking about an argument, but I don't > >> think a bare `-' (a hyphen) would be better. We're talking about an > >> ascii minus sign here; mandoc_char(7) says a minus sign can be obtained > >> with \- . > >> > > > > it's not a minus sign. it's a literal "-". > > I was thinking encoding-wise: you're typing an ascii minus sign, at the > cli. If you have a man/mdoc formatter that distinguishes hyphens and > minus signs, it could produce different output for those, and you would > not be able to copy-paste examples. Maybe mandoc doesn't, but groff > can (some distros even disabled this behavior). >
i'm not sure i follow. the differing widths of "-" will only happen if you add mark up. i'm arguing to remove it. a literal "-", with no mark up, can be copied/pasted no matter what the output format. well, i say this without actually having tried it. but if you can;t, something is not right. if you add markup (you suggested "\-"), then the width will vary for output formats such as postscript. that might stop you being able to paste (though again i've never tried). jmc
