Re: [Groff] meaning of \[or] glyph

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Werner,

> Looking into UTP, \[or] is indeed described as `or'.

And in the 7th Ed. comments it only ever has `or' in nearby comments.

> The problem is that \[or] might have been used for different purposes,
> e.g. denoting divisibility of whole numbers.

But not bracket building?  I know it isn't used for that these days, but
perhaps historically.

> Anyway, I have to make a decision, and I have decided to be
> conservative (contrary to my own conviction): groff will treat \[or]
> as font-invariable, i.e., the font shape will always be the same.

If it's of any interest, the output of

    .nf
    .de x
    .ft \\$1
    \\$1 abc\\(ordef
    ..
    .x B
    .x BI
    .x C
    .x CB
    .x CW
    .x H
    .x HB
    .x I
    .x R
    .x S
    .x TB
    .x TD
    .x TI
    .x TR

on AIX 3.2.5's old `troff -Tpsc' shows \(or as the `|' character, e.g.
ASCII 124, from the Symbol font in all cases except C and CW where it is
the C and CW's `|' character.

Cheers,


Ralph.