Re: [groff] [patch] modernize -T ascii rendering of opening single quote

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Jeff,

> > Thus one that makes 60 and 27 look like a left/right pair of single
> > quotes, and also grave and acute accents for over-striking.
>
> This is yet a third possibility, which the editor of the 1967 standard
> said was also true of the earlier version.  They gave possibilities,
> but intended no recommendations on which options to choose.

Agreed.  But industry, to my recollection and Googling, seems to have
settled on symmetric quotes that could double as accents to get the most
use out of those two bytes.  The lineprinter we had, don't know the make
other than it wasn't IBM nor DEC, also made them symmetric.

> Perhaps an even more relevant consideration: what percentage of
> displays today are in conflict with the ISO 646 encoding?  Shouldn’t
> the objective be the greatest good for the greatest number?

It's not the displays that matter.  Those seeing asymmetric `' that
would like that changed have displays that can, and normally do, render
with -Tutf8 and so see symmetric ‘’ instead.  It's if they choose, or
are coerced, into a LC_CTYPE=C locale causing -Tascii that they see
asymmetric `'.

-- 
Cheers, Ralph.