Proposed: changes to soelim(1)

[G. Branden Robinson]

Dave and I have been discussing a change.

I propose permitting soelim(1) to interpret spaces in a `so` argument
as-is, and supporting `ds`-style leading double-quote removal (allowing
file names that begin with spaces).

Why?

To align with a proposed syntax extension to `so` and other requests in
the formatter.  See bug #65108.

Won't this break compatibility with everybody?

No.  Historically, neither formatters nor soelim programs don't
interpret backslash-escaped spaces as spaces, and in fact soelim
programs traditionally rewrite the first space they encounter in a `so`
argument as a newline (likely putting an undesired partial file name on
the output as formatted text).

See comments 3 and 4 to bug #65108.

Won't this break compatibility with our own users' past documents?

Partially.  If they only ever processed such `so` "requests" with
soelim(1), such that the formatter, troff(1), never saw them, and the
arguments contained backslash-space escape sequences to cause
interpolation of files with spaces in their file names, yes.

If they tried to get the formatter to do this itself, perhaps because
they didn't need a file interpolated during _preprocessing_, they were
disappointed because it didn't work.

The idea here is to make it work, and make it work the same way,
whether soelim(1) is used or not.

soelim(1) will thus be able to interpret arbitrary file names.  See the
bug for details, including the proposed approach to character encoding
challenges.

Please follow-up with feedback and comments here or in bug #66027.

https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?65108
https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?66027

Regards,
Branden

P.S.  Anyone think soelim(1) should be refusing to open file names with
      slashes in them by default, and should accept a `-U` option to
      override that restriction?

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