Path: csiph.com!xmission!news.snarked.org!news.linkpendium.com!news.linkpendium.com!panix!usenet.stanford.edu!not-for-mail From: "G. Branden Robinson" Newsgroups: gnu.groff.bug Subject: [bug #57618] man/groff_char.7.man: page needs an overhaul Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2020 04:08:31 -0500 (EST) Lines: 74 Approved: bug-groff@gnu.org Message-ID: References: <20200117-022022.sv93119.66820@savannah.gnu.org> <20200117-090830.sv108747.25027@savannah.gnu.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: lists.gnu.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain;charset=UTF-8 X-Trace: usenet.stanford.edu 1579252124 19402 209.51.188.17 (17 Jan 2020 09:08:44 GMT) X-Complaints-To: action@cs.stanford.edu To: "G. Branden Robinson" , Dave , bug-groff@gnu.org Envelope-to: bug-groff@gnu.org X-PHP-Originating-Script: 1001:sendmail.php X-Savane-Server: savannah.gnu.org:443 [209.51.188.79] X-Savane-Project: groff X-Savane-Tracker: bugs X-Savane-Item-ID: 57618 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:60.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/60.0 PureBrowser/60.9.0 X-Apparently-From: 1.144.104.19 (Savane authenticated user gbranden) In-Reply-To: <20200117-022022.sv93119.66820@savannah.gnu.org> X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.2.x-3.x [generic] X-Received-From: 209.51.188.79 X-BeenThere: bug-groff@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.23 Precedence: list List-Id: "Bug reports for the GNU version of nroff, troff et al" List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-Mailman-Original-Message-ID: <20200117-090830.sv108747.25027@savannah.gnu.org> X-Mailman-Original-References: <20200117-022022.sv93119.66820@savannah.gnu.org> Xref: csiph.com gnu.groff.bug:1640 Update of bug #57618 (project groff): Status: None => Confirmed Assigned to: None => gbranden Summary: man/groff_char.7.man: meaning of "[sic]" is unclear => man/groff_char.7.man: page needs an overhaul _______________________________________________________ Follow-up Comment #1: commit 9fd6d7b45d9bb19c9bc3348cbe703c64a662b020 Author: G. Branden Robinson Date: Thu Jan 16 17:14:49 2020 +1100 groff_char(7): Fix typos in glyph descriptions. ...and a bogus "sic". A "guillemet" is in fact a kind of quotation mark. Adobe got it wrong with "guillemot", which is a seabird. I already got rid of the 4 "sic"s. But the page still has much that ails it, as you note. * The stuff in the first paragraph about "(N/A)" for unavailable glyphs is a lie, as far as I can tell. * As you note, the tables are often too wide. It would be nice to get them fitting on an 80-column terminal. This often means getting them to fit on a U.S. letter page when typeset, too, so it's a good norm to observe. * Way too much emphasis on Latin-1. We use preconv now. IMO groff input should be pure ASCII plus groff escapes, but preconv gives us more flexibility than that. * In fact I'd nuke the Latin-1 section altogether. It's an old, uninteresting encoding, and people had switched away to ISO 8859-15 even before they went to full-on UTF-8, because they needed the Euro sign. * Lots of Bernd-isms in this page, like repeatedly putting noun phrases in italics. I'd have fixed this page long ago if it didn't require so _much_ work. But fixing the irritating typos was a start. There is a theory that the [sic] was not for the guillemot/met spelling, but due to the problematic terminology of "left" and "right", because these glyphs are supposed to mirror-reflect when used in RTL languages. So I guess "forward" (in the direction of text flow) and "backward" are about the only terms we can use. But does groff even support RTL languages at all? As far as I know it does not, and this left/right is not worth fixing, in my view, until and unless it does. I am therefore, instead of closing this bug, adapting it to my own foul purposes. The laundry list of things I think it needs is above. Comments are welcome on my proposed actions. _______________________________________________________ Reply to this item at: _______________________________________________ Message sent via Savannah https://savannah.gnu.org/