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

[Ingo Schwarze]

Hi Ralph,

Ralph Corderoy wrote on Fri, Feb 01, 2019 at 03:22:56PM +0000:
> Ingo Schwarze wrote:

>> 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"
[...]
>         $
> 
> 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"

Yes.

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

Yes.

However, ASCII is probably the worst output mode available to check
for typos, in the first place.  Practically anything else is better
for that already now: -T utf8, html, ps, pdf, ...

The point of -T ascii is to get intelligible output on stunted devices,
not to convey the fine details of typesetting.  That doesn't imply
that it needs to look ugly or dated, though.

Yours,
  Ingo