Re: [Groff] underlining in nroff

[Werner LEMBERG]

May I ask the less maintainers to comment this?  Using various fonts
with xterm, I get various results.  Sometimes, it appears as if an
underlined underscore is shown, sometimes not.  What exactly is the
expected behaviour?  It seems to me that many X fonts are broken (at
least those which come with XFree86 3.3.6) or don't behave
consistently w.r.t. this problem.

BTW, `xterm -version' gives

   XFree86 4.0(129)


     Werner

======================================================================

From: address@hidden (Larry Jones)
Subject: Re: [Groff] underlining in nroff
Date: Sat, 31 Mar 2001 02:10:55 -0500 (EST)

> Werner LEMBERG writes [quoting me]:
> > > 
> > > So it does.  I'd call that a bug in less -- printing a space on
> > > top of an underscore shouldn't change the visual appearance of
> > > the underscore.
> > 
> > Is it really a bug?  I don't think so.  I think the current
> > solution in less (i.e. to make a visual difference between an
> > underlined space and an underscore character) is good.  The only
> > `limitation' is that an underscore character can't be underlined.
> 
> Why not?  If you're going to interpret "_^H " as an underlined
> space, then it would only make sense to interpret "_^H_" as an
> underlined underscore.  I stand by my original statement -- it's a
> bug in less, probably caused by laziness, carelessness, and/or a
> display device where the underline and the underscore line up.
> Certainly "_" and "_^H " are indistinguishable when printed on a
> traditional TTY, and that's what less is supposed to be emulating!
> 
> -Larry Jones