Since \. is not a character escape sequence, re-classify it from the
wrong parsing class ESCAPE_SPECIAL to the better-suited parsing class
ESCAPE_UNDEF, exactly like it is already done for the simila

Since \. is not a character escape sequence, re-classify it from the
wrong parsing class ESCAPE_SPECIAL to the better-suited parsing class
ESCAPE_UNDEF, exactly like it is already done for the similar \\,
which isn't a character escape sequence either.

No formatting change is intended just yet, but this will matter for
upcoming improvements in the parser for roff(7) macro, string, and
register names.

See the node "5.23.2 Copy Mode" in "info groff" regarding
what \\ and \. really mean.

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Delete a sentence pointing to "the Predefined Strings subsection
of the roff(7) manual." Such a subsection does not exist, and i
do not see why it should. Predefined strings are an obsolete
feature

Delete a sentence pointing to "the Predefined Strings subsection
of the roff(7) manual." Such a subsection does not exist, and i
do not see why it should. Predefined strings are an obsolete
feature of macro packages, not a feature of the roff language.

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Digit-width and narrow spaces are non-breaking.
Noticed because Branden Robinson worked on related documentation in groff.

While we do encourage simplicity in the sense of writing plain '-'
for hyphen-minus, soften the language a bit: writing \- for it is
not wrong, and people started sending us patches to replace \- wit

While we do encourage simplicity in the sense of writing plain '-'
for hyphen-minus, soften the language a bit: writing \- for it is
not wrong, and people started sending us patches to replace \- with '-'
in existing manual pages, which is not a worthwhile change unless
the \- is used at a place where it doesn't belong.
OK jmc@

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Several improvements to escape sequence handling.

* Add the missing special character \_ (underscore).
* Partial implementations of \a (leader character)
and \E (uninterpreted escape character).
* P

Several improvements to escape sequence handling.

* Add the missing special character \_ (underscore).
* Partial implementations of \a (leader character)
and \E (uninterpreted escape character).
* Parse and ignore \r (reverse line feed).
* Add a WARNING message about undefined escape sequences.
* Add an UNSUPP message about unsupported escape sequences.
* Mark \! and \? (transparent throughput)
and \O (suppress output) as unsupported.
* Treat the various variants of zero-width spaces as one-byte escape
sequences rather than as special characters, to avoid defining bogus
forms with square brackets.
* For special characters with one-byte names, do not define bogus
forms with square brackets, except for \[-], which is valid.
* In the form with square brackets, undefined special characters do not
fall back to printing the name verbatim, not even for one-byte names.
* Starting a special character name with a blank is an error.
* Undefined escape sequences never abort formatting of the input
string, not even in HTML output mode.
* Document the newly handled escapes, and a few that were missing.
* Regression tests for most of the above.

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Fix some issues found looking at groff_char(7):
* Add two missing characters, \('Y and \('y.
* The Weierstrass p is not capital, see http://unicode.org/notes/tn27/.
* Add a groff-compatible ASCII tra

Fix some issues found looking at groff_char(7):
* Add two missing characters, \('Y and \('y.
* The Weierstrass p is not capital, see http://unicode.org/notes/tn27/.
* Add a groff-compatible ASCII transliteration for U+02DC: "~".

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handle the non-portable GNU-style \[charNN], \[charNNN] character
escape sequences, used for example in the groff_char(7) manual page

Even though we strongly discourage escaping hyphens in manual pages
in general, when introducing the *typographic* term "hyphen",
actually display a real hyphen in output modes supporting it.

Reorder the text in the "Dashes and Hyphens" subsection to keep the
simplest and most important instructions together and at the
beginning. No text change.
Suggested by jmc@.

Clarify the confusing "(text)" annotation in the character lists.
In some cases, it meant "render as an ASCII character in output
modes that have a notion of codepoints" (e.g. UTF-8, HTML); in other

Clarify the confusing "(text)" annotation in the character lists.
In some cases, it meant "render as an ASCII character in output
modes that have a notion of codepoints" (e.g. UTF-8, HTML); in other
cases, "render in the text font in output modes that also provide
a special font for mathematical symbols" (e.g. PostScript, PDF).
Also explicitly annotate the escape sequences that use a special
font if available.
OK bentley@

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After years of deliberation, finally provide a clear recommendation
for hyphens and minus signs in manual pages.
Since there is consensus that a typographically perfect solution is
impossible, let's

After years of deliberation, finally provide a clear recommendation
for hyphens and minus signs in manual pages.
Since there is consensus that a typographically perfect solution is
impossible, let's KISS - just write "-", don't bother with "\-", all
currently relevant manual page formatters can handle "-" reasonably.
OK jmc@ bentley@

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Soften the language discouraging special character escape sequences.
After i improved their ASCII renderings in groff and mandoc some time
ago, mathematical symbols can now be used in specialised mat

Soften the language discouraging special character escape sequences.
After i improved their ASCII renderings in groff and mandoc some time
ago, mathematical symbols can now be used in specialised mathematical
manual pages like libm and some X libraries.
Tweaks and OK jmc@.

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add the \(ru (0.5m baseline ruler) character escape sequence,
abused by mail/nmh; groff_char(7) confirms that this really exists

add about 15 missing character escape sequences found in groff_char(7);
triggered by multimedia/mkvtoolnix mkvmerge(1) using \(S2

Delete the -T xhtml command line option.
It has been obsolete for more than two years.
Use -T html.

Mention that escaping "^" as "\(ha" in source code samples improves
portability, in particular when rendering to formats such as PDF
with real typesetters such as groff.

While here, make it even mor

Mention that escaping "^" as "\(ha" in source code samples improves
portability, in particular when rendering to formats such as PDF
with real typesetters such as groff.

While here, make it even more explicit that the rendering of raw
ASCII accents ( ` ' ~ ^ ) found in the input is kind of a mess and
varies among implementations, software versions, macro sets, and
output devices.

Issue noticed when reading the groff_char(7) manual, and confirmed
by testing with current groff.

OK bentley@, "certainly no objection" jmc@

N.B.: Nobody will get scolded for ignoring this subtlety.

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document hyphenation

Recommend an unambiguous escape for minus signs instead of \-.

Historically, \- was used in troff for three cases: flags/pathnames,
en dashes, and minus signs. mandoc_char(7) currently recommends it

Recommend an unambiguous escape for minus signs instead of \-.

Historically, \- was used in troff for three cases: flags/pathnames,
en dashes, and minus signs. mandoc_char(7) currently recommends it
for minus signs, recommends \(en for en dashes, and doesn't mention
flags/pathnames.

In the old days, nroff rendered \- as ASCII '-', and troff rendered
it as en dash/minus (which were visually indistinguishable).

In Unicode, en dashes and minus signs are semantically distinct and
encoded differently (U+2013 for en dash, U+2212 for minus), and
often rendered differently too. Meanwhile ASCII '-' has been renamed
"hyphen-minus" and fonts typically render it closest to a hyphen, not
a minus.

There is very little consistency across roff implementations and output
formats for what Unicode character \- corresponds to. So at least for
minus signs, change the recommendation to the unambiguous \(mi escape.

ok jmc@ (after reams of discussion)

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Kill trailing blank; no text change.
Issue found by Tony Sim <y2s1982 at gmail dot com>
during today's BSDCan Doc Sprint.

Escape punctuation characters that have a different meaning in -Tpdf.

~, `, and ' get translated to non-ASCII characters by most troff
implementations when generating PostScript/PDF output. When the

Escape punctuation characters that have a different meaning in -Tpdf.

~, `, and ' get translated to non-ASCII characters by most troff
implementations when generating PostScript/PDF output. When the original
ASCII character is meant, it needs to be manually escaped.

discussed with jmc@ schwarze@; ok schwarze@

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Document that certain stand-alone accents need escaping in rare cases to
prevent them from being converted to Unicode replacements in PDF output.
Issue found by bentley@, OK jmc@ bentley@.

change spelling of centre to center. consistent with other man pages,
the name of the macro being described, and look(1).
ok jmc

correct -Tutf8 and -Thtml rendering of \(~=
and change the name of \(-~ to \(|= to agree with groff;
difference found by Carsten dot Kunze at arcor dot de

correct some character names to match groff;
reported by Carsten dot Kunze at arcor dot de

Rework the documentation of Spaces, using the Ossanna/Kernighan/Ritter
Heirloom Nroff/Troff User's Manual at the authoritative reference.
Part of our text was outright wrong.

Also, refrain from adve

Rework the documentation of Spaces, using the Ossanna/Kernighan/Ritter
Heirloom Nroff/Troff User's Manual at the authoritative reference.
Part of our text was outright wrong.

Also, refrain from advertising the paddable non-breaking space `\~'
in the DESCRIPTION, for three reasons: For nroff mode, -Tascii, and
fixed width fonts in general, it makes no difference, so keep the
discussion simple. Compared to `\ ', '\~' is of questionable portability.
And if you want to keep words together, it is also more usual that you
don't want padding to intervene either.

Finally, drop the `\c' escape sequence (interrupt text processing)
which is not a special character but an input processing instruction
akin to the \<newline> escape sequence.

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