[bug #65102] [mdoc] objection to title heading rendering in 1.23.0

[G. Branden Robinson]

Update of bug#65102 (group groff):

                Severity:              3 - Normal => 2 - Minor              
              Item Group:     Incorrect behaviour => Rendering/Cosmetics    
                  Status:                    None => Need Info              
             Assigned to:                    None => gbranden               
                 Summary: mdoc nroff output for Dt broken since 1.23 => [mdoc]
objection to title heading rendering in 1.23.0

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Follow-up Comment #1:

I had a lengthy response to this but somehow lost or clobbered in one of my
hundreds of browser tabs.  :(

But I did take some screenshots that I can still lay my hands on.

First:

> Dt is misrendered

This is a matter of opinion...

> but only in nroff mode.

...but this is not.  The italics to which you object are applied in both
typesetter and terminal output.  See attachments.

> in 1.22.4-10, the top left and right corners were "A_B_C(9)".

Yes.

> In 1.23.0-3 [...] they are "\fIA_B_C\fP(9)",

Yes.

> (a) why would you need this?

For consistency between _man_(7) and _mdoc_(7) page renderings, also discussed
in bug #65101, and for consistency between mentions of page titles in `MR` and
`Xr` cross references and their referents (targets).

> (b) completely breaks manuals with underscores in the name,

Breaks how?  What tool is breaking?  Some output scraper?  There is no
specification for such things.

> because "\fIA_B_C\fP(9)" and "A_B_C(9)" and "\fIA B C\fP(9)" are all drawn
identically.

This is demonstrably false in both typesetter and terminal output (even
without using _grotty_'s `-i` option to obtain "true" italics if the terminal
device supports them).  See attachments.

It is possible that your terminal emulator is limited or defective.  In such
cases, many elements of the rendered page that should be differentiable will
not be.  For instance, on the "ascii" and "latin1" output devices, hyphens and
minus signs are visually identical, and on the "utf8", "ps", and "pdf" output
devices, they are distinguishable.

> I didn't have the time or the energy to root-cause this.

I know exactly whence it comes, but not what, apart from a reflexive objection
to any change, is motivating your bug report.

Setting to "Need Info" status.

Exhibit corresponding to attachments (all font styling is lost in
copy-and-paste operations, of course):


##$ cat ATTIC/goofy.mdoc 
.Dd 2023-12-31
.Dt A_B_C 9
.Os
.Sh Name
.Nm goofy
.Nd a goofy page
.Sh Description
There is nothing more to say.
##$ ~/groff-stable/bin/groff -rLL=50n -mdoc -Tutf8 ATTIC/goofy.mdoc
A_B_C(9)     Kernel Developer’s Manual    A_B_C(9)

Name
       goofy — a goofy page

Description
       There is nothing more to say.

GNU                 2023‐12‐31            A_B_C(9)
##$ ~/groff-stable/bin/groff -mdoc ATTIC/goofy.mdoc >| goofy.ps
##$ evince goofy.ps


 

(file #55494, file #55495)

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Additional Item Attachment:

File name: mdoc-page-with-italic-title-terminal.png Size:39 KB
   
<https://file.savannah.gnu.org/file/mdoc-page-with-italic-title-terminal.png?file_id=55494>

File name: mdoc-page-with-italic-title-ps.png Size:14 KB
   
<https://file.savannah.gnu.org/file/mdoc-page-with-italic-title-ps.png?file_id=55495>


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https://git.savannah.nongnu.org/cgit/administration/savane.git/snapshot/savane-ec09902a0a059b4d4d29a6c422be312926e7bc1e.tar.gz


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