Re: [Groff] [Groff & Heirloom] tbl problem with backslashes

[Mike Bianchi]

On Mon, Sep 01, 2014 at 05:07:51PM +0200, Carsten Kunze wrote:
> ----- Original Nachricht ----
> Von:     Mike Bianchi <address@hidden>
> 
> >     In troff, the number of  /  characters necessary to output a single
> >      /  character grows exponentially with macro depth.
> 
> Ok, but should we consider fields as macros?  I had not expcted up
> to now that fields reduce \\ to \.  And we now have a difference
> between groff and other troff variants here.
>
> So I read your and Ralph's mail as "\\ should not be used to produce
> a \ character in the output and so we don't need to fix this feature"?

That is my take.  \\  yielding  \  output is relying on a side-effect of the
definition of  "escape character" .

 \e  yielding  \  relies on the common, but not universal,
case where the escape character is has the current value of  / .

\[rs] is utterly reliable within groff.

-- 
 Mike Bianchi
 Foveal Systems

 973 822-2085

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