Re: [Groff] Getting properly rendered single quotes in groff

[Werner LEMBERG]

> > Indeed.  Right now I'm using such a font in Emacs, a 12x24 bitmap
> > font (Etl-Fixed-Medium).
> 
> I'm using my own 6x10 bitmap font, hand-drawn pixel by pixel
> in long hours of hard manual labor ;-).  [6x10 means that
> you can display *lots* of text on a 1920x1200 display.]

Uh, oh, I *hate* such small fonts -- it's far too laborious for my
eyes.

> > Please bear in mind that we are talking about man pages, not
> > troff documents in general.
> 
> I understand.  I'm just unwilling to accept different basic design
> principles for every individual device.

Hmm.  There aren't `different basic design principles'!  I tried very
hard to have consistent glyph and character shapes and names across
all devices.  Regarding \` and \', CSTR #54 clearly says that they are
grave and acute accents, respectively.  However, for man pages, a
different *input convention* seems to have been established over the
time, which needs different mappings.

> Also, when formatting manual pages with the ps device, it's much
> better to use "ascii" quotes from the Courier font than acute and
> grave accents from the Times font.

One more reason to have better mappings for man pages on the PS
device.

> Actually, I believe \` and \' are used extremely seldom in their
> role as accents.  If I would ever find it necessary to use a custom
> accented character I'd think it's easier to use .char [...]

I fully agree.

> Thus, it's perfectly okay for me if \` and \' change to mean ascii
> quotes.  But then, please, in all groff devices, everywhere.

For all groff devices, everywhere, *within man pages*.  Sorry to say,
but everything else would break backwards compatibility -- something
groff should retain IMHO.


    Werner