Re: ^G

[John Gardner]

Hi Wim,

Roff syntax permits certain ASCII control characters in identifiers.
They're typically used by older macro-packages to avoid naming conflicts,
or in contexts when an arbitrary delimiter may appear in legitimate texts
(such as the .tl request).

Acceptable control characters are:

   - ^B STX (Start of text)
   - ^C ETX (End of text)
   - ^E ENQ (Enquiry)
   - ^F ACK (Acknowledge)
   - ^G BEL (Alarm / bell)
   - ^? DEL (Delete)

Groff also accepts ^D (End of transmission) and form feeds, although the
latter might be unintentional. For full details on compatibility, see

https://gist.github.com/Alhadis/b3931ccde8390de8c685bcc582a7060d#file-readme-md


(This page excludes details for mandoc(1), as its syntax deviates from
traditional Troff implementations w.r.t. valid identifier characters. I
told Ingo about the discrepancy, but he seems reluctant to fix it).

Cheers,
— John

On Tue, 2 Feb 2021 at 20:23, Wim Stockman <wim.stockman@gmail.com> wrote:

> What is the purpose of this? ^G , control character.
> I see it a lot used in the hdtbl macro set.
>
> Kind regards
> Wim Stockman
>