From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from localhost (fantadrom.bsd.lv [local]) by fantadrom.bsd.lv (OpenSMTPD) with ESMTPA id dfa567af for ; Thu, 15 Mar 2018 13:11:01 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2018 13:11:01 -0500 (EST) X-Mailinglist: mandoc-source Reply-To: source@mandoc.bsd.lv MIME-Version: 1.0 From: schwarze@mandoc.bsd.lv To: source@mandoc.bsd.lv Subject: mandoc: Soften the language discouraging special character escape X-Mailer: activitymail 1.26, http://search.cpan.org/dist/activitymail/ Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Message-Id: <84f50cf2d17ed65c@fantadrom.bsd.lv> Log Message: ----------- Soften the language discouraging special character escape sequences. After i improved their ASCII renderings in groff and mandoc some time ago, mathematical symbols can now be used in specialised mathematical manual pages like libm and some X libraries. Tweaks and OK jmc@. Modified Files: -------------- mandoc: mandoc_char.7 Revision Data ------------- Index: mandoc_char.7 =================================================================== RCS file: /home/cvs/mandoc/mandoc/mandoc_char.7,v retrieving revision 1.67 retrieving revision 1.68 diff -Lmandoc_char.7 -Lmandoc_char.7 -u -p -r1.67 -r1.68 --- mandoc_char.7 +++ mandoc_char.7 @@ -35,13 +35,27 @@ documents. .Pp The rendering depends on the .Xr mandoc 1 -output mode; in ASCII output, most characters are completely -unintelligible. -For that reason, using any of the special characters documented here, -except those discussed in the +output mode; it can be inspected by calling +.Xr man 1 +on the +.Nm +manual page with different +.Fl T +arguments. +In ASCII output, the rendering of some characters may be hard +to interpret for the reader. +Many are rendered as descriptive strings like +.Qq , +.Qq , +or +.Qq , +which may look ugly, and many are replaced by similar ASCII characters. +In particular, accented characters are usually shown without the accent. +For that reason, try to avoid using any of the special characters +documented here except those discussed in the .Sx DESCRIPTION , -is strongly discouraged; they are supported merely for backwards -compatibility with existing documents. +unless they are essential for explaining the subject matter at hand, +for example when documenting complicated mathematical functions. .Pp In particular, in English manual pages, do not use special-character escape sequences to represent national language characters in author -- To unsubscribe send an email to source+unsubscribe@mandoc.bsd.lv