[bug #63635] [troff] support `hydefault` register or similar

[G. Branden Robinson]

URL:
  <https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?63635>

                 Summary: [troff] support `hydefault` register or similar
                 Project: GNU troff
               Submitter: gbranden
               Submitted: Mon 09 Jan 2023 04:20:38 PM UTC
                Category: Core
                Severity: 3 - Normal
              Item Group: Feature change
                  Status: None
                 Privacy: Public
             Assigned to: None
             Open/Closed: Open
         Discussion Lock: Any
         Planned Release: None


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Follow-up Comments:


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Date: Mon 09 Jan 2023 04:20:38 PM UTC By: G. Branden Robinson <gbranden>
A comment in tmac/an-ext.tmac says it all.


.\" In AT&T troff, there was no register exposing the hyphenation mode,
.\" and no way to save and restore it.


In man pages, we see people fiddle with `hy` requests, often seemingly under
the assumption that it works like `ft`; that calling it without arguments will
restore the previous setting.

But it doesn't, and never has.  `.hy` without an argument means `.hy 1`, which
is just about useless for all our hyphenation patterns.

I propose to add a (writable) internal register, `hydefault`, to house that
value that an argumentless `hy` request will set.

Its default value (in the formatter) would be `1`, retaining 50 years of AT&T
troff compatibility.

However, in groff's localization files, this register would be updated to
something sensible for the locale.







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