Re: [groff] Regularize (sub)section cross references.

[Ingo Schwarze]

Salut Pierre-Jean,

Pierre-Jean Fichet wrote on Mon, Dec 17, 2018 at 08:19:14PM +0100:
> Ingo Schwarze <address@hidden> wrote:
>> Branden:
>>> Pierre Jean:
>>>> Branden:

>>>>> +.ie \\$1 .tr aAbBcCdDeEfFgGhHiIjJkKlLmMnNoOpPqQrRsStTuUvVwWxXyYzZ
>>>>> +.el      .tr aabbccddeeffgghhiijjkkllmmnnooppqqrrssttuuvvwwxxyyzz

>>>> The problem with this, is that it ignores all but english languages.

>>> Yup.  I'm aware of that, which is why I did not propose it as an
>>> actual patch.

[ something about German Esszet was snipped here in between ]

>> I'm a native German speaker and i wouldn't worry about that at all.
>> It would be good enough to just ignore that problem, it is really a
>> fringe case.

> While I agree with the facts that 1) translated manpages are rarely
> up to date, 2) most people, and particularly those having to read manual
> pages, speak english well enough for that task, and 3) computer science
> is better understood in english than in native languages in most places,
> I can't agree on the fact that a typographical enhancement of manual
> pages should involve a regression for all languages but english.

True.  I fully agree with that.

> I mean, people allready believe that groff/troff is a tool of the past,
> they don't need to come back to the nineties when computers were unable
> to display accented uppercase letters. Or should they ?

No, they shouldn't.  

My comment was specifically about a character for which Branden
said that Unicode support is so recent (U+1E9E LATIN CAPITAL LETTER
SHARP S) that the operating systems of some users may not have
support for it yet and may continue to show it as a small letter
even after applying towupper(3).  Even assuming that fear is
well-founded, it's a fringe concern.

Je ne propose pas d'eleminer la difference entre "ou" et "ou" ou
"ete" et "ete", even though i usually refrain from typing UTF-8 in
email...  ;-)

Yours,
  Ingo