[bug #55616] -T ascii rendering: do not render \(oq as "accent grave"

[Ingo Schwarze]

URL:
  <https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?55616>

                 Summary: -T ascii rendering: do not render \(oq as "accent
grave"
                 Project: GNU troff
            Submitted by: schwarze
            Submitted on: Thu 31 Jan 2019 01:00:01 PM UTC
                Category: Font - others
                Severity: 2 - Minor
              Item Group: None
                  Status: None
                 Privacy: Public
             Assigned to: schwarze
             Open/Closed: Open
         Discussion Lock: Any
         Planned Release: None

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Details:

If i remember correctly, some time ago, people went through error messages and
manual pages and changed single-quoted strings where the opening quote was an
"accent grave" to the normal ASCII U+0027 APOSTROPHE-QUOTE because rendering
single quotes like `this' was considered an anachronism from the mechanical
typewriter era.

However, the -T ascii output device still renders \(oq as "accent grave", also
affecting macro packages that implement single quoting macros in terms of
\(oq, for example mdoc(7) .Sq.

I propose the patch below to change the -T ascii (and -T latin1) rendering of
\(oq from "accent grave" to APOSTROPHE-QUOTE.  No other output device is
affected.

For example, this makes -Tascii-rendered manual pages look less antique, and
if this is decided, i will do the same in mandoc(1).  However, i think it's
also the right thing to do for non-manual-page documents.

Issue brought up by Anthony Bentley@ (OpenBSD).



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File Attachments:


-------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu 31 Jan 2019 01:00:01 PM UTC  Name: oq.patch  Size: 743B   By:
schwarze

<http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/download.php?file_id=46143>

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