Re: [Groff] \(aq not working in OpenSolaris environment

[Werner LEMBERG]

>> > Does \(aq not work with AT&T troff?
>> 
>> In a TTY, you have to use ', I think.
> 
> The apostrophe (and also the escaped apostrophe both) render as a
> right single quotation mark accordingly to groff_char(7).  It
> further says:
> 
>> ' the ISO Latin-1 ‘Apostrophe’ (code 39) prints as ’, a right
>>   single quotation mark; the corresponding ISO Latin-1 characters
>>   can be obtained with \‘ and \(aq.

Uh, which version of groff are you looking at?  Version 1.20.1 says
this:

  ' the ISO latin1 `Apostrophe' (code 39) prints as ', a right single
    quotation mark; the original character can be obtained with
    `\(aq'.

This documentation bug has been fixed in 1.19, *six* years ago!

> but "\‘" doesn't render as an apostrophe with groff (on my Debian
> Sid).

Exactly.  \` is the grave accent.  From groff_char(7):

  ` the ISO latin1 `Grave Accent' (code 96) prints as `, a left single
    quotation mark; the original character can be obtained with `\`'.

All people (except Japanese perhaps) should upgrade to the recent
groff version.  The strange strategy of Debian to stay with the 1.18
series is, hmm, outdated :-)

> So following your answer it seems, there is no way to represent a
> straight apostrophe in a portable way?

No, there isn't.  The portable version \[aq] only exists within groff.


    Werner