Re: [Groff] Critique this bold-italic private macro for man pages

[Carsten Kunze]

> "G. Branden Robinson" <address@hidden> hat am 3. Mai 2017 um 17:30 
> geschrieben:
> 
> Nope.  By "private macro" I mean one defined and used only within one
> document.

A manpage is "one document". Or what do you refer to?

> Most \n(.g tests I've seen in man pages are to try to _achieve_
> portability, not break it.
> 
> E.g., ncurses uses these conditionals in many of its pages:
> 
> .ie \n(.g .ds `` \(lq
> .el       .ds `` ``
> .ie \n(.g .ds '' \(rq
> .el       .ds '' ''

So all formatters except groff are only allowed to have second class output?  
Exactly because of this poor code Heirloom sets .g to 1.  I assume also 
mandoc(1) reads \(.g as 1.  Had this been the intention behind register .g in 
groff?  So when all relevant tools set .g to 1, what is the point of this 
register? ;)

Three tools know of these special characters.  Either change other tools to 
support groff_char(7), groff_man(7) and groff_mdoc(7) or replace them with with 
one of the three tools.