Follow-up Comment #11, bug #68133 (group groff): At 2026-05-01T03:43:31-0400, John Gardner wrote: > Follow-up Comment #10, bug #68133 (group groff): >> When you translate a character to an escape sequence that does not >> represent a character, you might get an unbreakable space, you might >> get nothing, or you might get a backslash. > > So in other words,
I don't accept your wording as a complete summary of my position.
> this is undefined (implementation-defined) behaviour that ought to be
> documented as such.
Yes, I expect that'd be part of resolving this ticket.
> Users should be informed that translating non-character escape
> sequences[1] is unportable behaviour, and they should avoid depending
> on it in their documents.
Yes, that's implied by your previous sentence (and a reasonable level of
diligence in writing documentation).
>> There's no need for the coming generations of *roff users
>
> What's the real rationale for changing the semantics of `.tr`?
Why do you suppose I have an ulterior one?
> Making GNU Troff approachable for future generations of users? Or
> improving portability to other variants of _troff_?
What makes these mutually exclusive?
Ultimately, it's up to a _document_ to be portable. One formatter is
not "portable to" another.
> [1] "Non-character escape sequences" := those that don't idempotently
> expand to a single-character string.
"String" is a slippery word here. See bug #68234.
And, for fun, bug #68235.
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