Re: a bold challenge for anti-deviationists

[Lennart Jablonka]

Quoth G. Branden Robinson:
> My questions/challenges for the reader are:
>
> A.  In which of the five do you expect to see "ABC" emboldened?
> B.  In which of the five do you expect to see the special characters
>    emboldened?

Groff 1.22.4, plan9port troff, Heirloom troff, and 2.11BSD¹ troff 
all behave the same: 2, 3, and 4 all have ABC and the characters 
from the special font emboldened; in 1 and 5, nothing is bold.

The question is how emboldening a normal font affects special 
characters.  CSTR #54 says (§ 2.2p3):

> characters on that [special] font are automatically handled as if 
> they were physically part of the current font.

With that context, I think the behavior observed makes sense.  The 
characters in special fonts are handled as if part of R, so they, 
too, are emboldened when R is.

I wouldn’t be too surprised about a different interpretation: One 
of not emboldening the characters taken from the special fonts if 
just R is emboldened by .bd.  Just emboldening the characters from 
the special fonts if S is emboldened, or even just if the second 
form of .bd is used.  I couldn’t tell, and guessed wrong (that the 
characters from the special fonts wouldn’t be emboldened at all).  
I lose.

CSTR #54 makes for a great reference.  It is not perfect, and I’m 
all in favor of having better and better references.

I am happy that the results are consistent in all the troffs 
I tried.

¹ On early Unices, troff -t gives you the C/A/T input and tc gives 
you Tektronix 4014 input from it; XTerm can simulate a 
Tektronix 4014.