Re: [groff] [patch] modernize -T ascii rendering of opening single quote

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Ingo,

> If i remember correctly, some time ago, people went through error
> messages and manual pages and changed single-quoted strings where the
> opening quote was an "accent grave" to the normal ASCII U+0027
> APOSTROPHE-QUOTE because rendering single quotes like `this' was
> considered an anachronism from the mechanical typewriter era.
>
> However, the -T ascii output device still renders \(oq as "accent
> grave", also affecting macro packages that implement single quoting
> macros in terms of \(oq, for example mdoc(7) .Sq.
>
> I propose the patch below to change the -T ascii (and -T latin1)
> rendering of \(oq from "accent grave" to APOSTROPHE-QUOTE. No other
> output device is affected.

Have I got this right?  Currently,

        $ cat quote.tr
        .pl 1
     3  `ascii' \(oqoq-cq\(cq \(aqaq\(aq \(lqlq-rq\(rq \(dqdq\(dq
        $
        $ nroff -Tascii quote.tr
     6  `ascii' `oq-cq' 'aq' "lq-rq" "dq"
        $ nroff -Tlatin1 quote.tr
     8  `ascii' `oq-cq' 'aq' "lq-rq" "dq"
        $ nroff -Tutf8 quote.tr
    10  ‘ascii’ ‘oq‐cq’ 'aq' “lq‐rq” "dq"
        $

6 and 8 are identical.  You're suggesting they stay the same and become

   old  `ascii' `oq-cq' 'aq' "lq-rq" "dq"
   new  `ascii' 'oq-cq' 'aq' "lq-rq" "dq"

Thus losing the ability to tell if I mistyped \(oq as \(cq with -Tascii
or -Tlatin1?

-- 
Cheers, Ralph.