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authorIngo Schwarze <schwarze@openbsd.org>2019-02-23 18:53:54 +0000
committerIngo Schwarze <schwarze@openbsd.org>2019-02-23 18:53:54 +0000
commitc2bb42a59886b032702b942900a91f729e9e9480 (patch)
tree2ca279cdbcd27a53a12b7b27dc39120fdd128b42
parenta3e97e30f7b0752d324f2a8dc6da61bc6585b822 (diff)
downloadmandoc-c2bb42a59886b032702b942900a91f729e9e9480.tar.gz
Explain the ASCII rendering of single quotes because that repeatedly
caused confusion in the past. People plainly do not expect that there are limits to the compatibility between Unicode and ASCII, but there are. The information belongs here and not into mandoc_char(7) because it explains how the specific output device (-T ascii) works and because it has nothing to do with the question of how characters are represented on the input side.
-rw-r--r--mandoc.111
1 files changed, 11 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/mandoc.1 b/mandoc.1
index 7db089fa..d29be7e9 100644
--- a/mandoc.1
+++ b/mandoc.1
@@ -267,6 +267,17 @@ instead.
The special characters documented in
.Xr mandoc_char 7
are rendered best-effort in an ASCII equivalent.
+In particular, opening and closing
+.Sq single quotes
+are represented as characters number 0x60 and 0x27, respectively,
+which agrees with all ASCII standards from 1965 to the latest
+revision (2012) and which matches the traditional way in which
+.Xr roff 7
+formatters represent single quotes in ASCII output.
+This correct ASCII rendering may look strange with modern
+Unicode-compatible fonts because contrary to ASCII, Unicode uses
+the code point U+0060 for the grave accent only, never for an opening
+quote.
.Pp
The following
.Fl O