[bug #58796] preconv: want option to write traditional [g|t]roff special characters where possible

[Ingo Schwarze]

Follow-up Comment #4, bug #58796 (project groff):

Regarding note #3 (it's all a bit tangential to this ticket):

I meant requiring iconv(3) at compile time, not iconv(1) at run-time.  The
former would be horrible, the latter almost harmless.

I neither think that groff is really C++, it is more like C with some aspects
of classes, nor am i aware of features in C++ to handle Unicode.  When you
handle Unicode in C++, you just use C library features.  And Unicode handling
in Perl and C is totally different, so much so that i can hardly think of any
commonalities, so talking about Perl is really pointless here.

C features for handling Unicode are so bad that even for a new program, i
would seriously consider making it ASCII only even today rather than using
them.  When Kristaps started mandoc ten years ago, he made exactly that
decision, and i'm very grateful to him for that, is was a very wise decision. 
Even though internally, it uses practically no C-library Unicode-handling
features and no other Unicode-handling library, it has practically perfect and
in particular extremely robust and simple Unicode support.  I very much doubt
that converting an existing program like groff would be a good idea, even if
you had time to waste for a purely make-work project, in particular since
groff already has a way for handling Unicode that works reasonably well and is
simpler and more robust than anything you could do with the native C library
features.

Of course, all this turns out to argue slightly in favour of Branden's idea,
but i still think this ticket isn't high priority.

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