Re: [Groff] \(aq not working in OpenSolaris environment

[Daniel Leidert]

Am Mittwoch, den 11.02.2009, 08:20 +0100 schrieb Werner LEMBERG:
> > I'm testing some groff source with non-GNU troff in an OpenSolaris/
> > SunOS 5.11 environment and noticed a problem. I'm using \(aq in the
> > source to represent straight apostrophes, but when I view the TTY
> > output, no apostrophes (nor any other characters) show up where they
> > should be.
> >
> > Does \(aq not work with AT&T troff?
> 
> It's a groff extension.  If you look into the groff_char(7) man page
> you can see that only entity names marked with `+' can be found in the
> original AT&T troff.
> 
> > Is there some alternative way I can mark it up instead?
> 
> In a TTY, you have to use ', I think.

The apostrophe (and also the escaped apostrophe both) render as a right
single quotation mark accordingly to groff_char(7). It further says:

> '      the ISO Latin-1 ‘Apostrophe’ (code 39) prints as ’, a right single 
> quotation mark; the corresponding ISO Latin-1  charac‐
>               ters can be obtained with \‘ and \(aq.
> 

but "\‘" doesn't render as an apostrophe with groff (on my Debian Sid).
The original bug report (related to what Michael asked) was sent to
Debian:

http://bugs.debian.org/507673

So following your answer it seems, there is no way to represent a
straight apostrophe in a portable way?

Regards, Daniel