Re: Raw UTF-8?

[Kristaps Dzonsons <kristaps@bsd.lv>]

> When using special characters in manpages, I use plain UTF-8 instead of
> the escapes documented in mandoc_char(7), for a couple reasons. I'm just
> wondering, is this practice discouraged in any way? Is there a chance
> of this _not_ working in future versions of mandoc?

This is being discussed on tech@ right now.

Currently, once you use any non-ASCII encoding, the manual is no longer 
accessable to all terminals.  This is bad.  Furthermore, -Tps will throw 
away your input.  This is more bad.  In fact, only -Thtml will be ok 
with what you do, which is only by dint of it using the same output 
encoding.

groff promises Unicode support in "the next major version".  According 
to their mailing lists, they plan on using \[uNNN] for a Unicode escape 
and on-the-fly translate input UTF-8 into Unicode (effectively using 
"int" instead of "char" for characters).

     http://www.mail-archive.com/groff@gnu.org/msg01378.html

I think it's best for the time being to lift the input warnings and 
document that non-ASCII characters will Balkanise the manual.  I'm 
flapping between warning about it and not warning.

What, by the way, are the reasons you have against using the mandoc_char 
escapes?
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