CVS log for mandoc/mandoc_char.7

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Default branch: MAIN
Current tag: VERSION_1_13_4

Revision 1.63 / (download) - annotate - [select for diffs], Wed Sep 2 15:38:35 2015 UTC (8 years, 7 months ago) by schwarze
Branch: MAIN
CVS Tags: VERSION_1_13_4
Changes since 1.62: +7 -7 lines
Diff to previous 1.62 (colored) 

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.

from bentley@, ok jmc@ (after reams of discussion)

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