On 2022/07/31 02:04 PM, Alejandro Colomar (man-pages) wrote: > On 7/31/22 13:49, Baptiste Beauplat wrote: > > Hi Alejandro, > > > > On 2022/07/31 12:35 PM, Alejandro Colomar wrote: > > > The template page 'manpage.1.ex' uses '-' instead of '\-' for a > > > dash that should be a Latin minus sign (as it's in the context of > > > command options). Using '-' would produce a hyphen, which if > > > copy&pasted, wouldn't be interpreted correctly by a command. > > > > > > The offending line in the file is 41: > > > > > > options starting with two dashes ('-') > > > > When I run the following command on the manpage : > > > > man ./manpage.1.ex | xxd > > > > The resulting text from the dash line 41 is converted to the correct 2d > > minus ascii char. > > > > The same is true for the two examples following that text, which are > > correctly shown as \-\- in the source. > > > > I am missing something? Or maybe the fact that this text is in a .SH > > section make it work correctly? > > Upstream groff(1) renders '-' and '\-' differently, as they should. > However, since many manual pages in existence are incorrect, and they use > '-' when they should use '\-', Debian modifies the behavior by downgrading > hyphens into Latin minus sign. > > Let's fix the page in the hope that Debian can some day remove that > workaround. > > See the relevant part of </etc/groff/man.local>: > > . \" Debian: Strictly, "-" is a hyphen while "\-" is a minus sign, and the > . \" former may not always be rendered in the form expected for things like > . \" command-line options. Uncomment this if you want to make sure that > . \" manual pages you're writing are clear of this problem. > . if '\*[.T]'utf8' \ > . char - \[hy]
Oh wow, I was not aware of this Debian-specific behaviour. Sure, let's do this the correct way :) -- Baptiste Beauplat - lyknode
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