Re: [PATCH 2/2] doc: remove GNU_ROFF option

["brian m. carlson" <sandals@crustytoothpaste.net>]

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On 2021-05-12 at 04:45:53, Felipe Contreras wrote:
> brian m. carlson wrote:
> > By default, groff converts apostrophes in troff source to Unicode
> > apostrophes.  This is helpful and desirable when being used as a
> > typesetter, since it makes the output much cleaner and more readable,
> > but it is a problem in manual pages, since apostrophes are often used
> > around shell commands and these should remain in their ASCII form for
> > compatibility with the shell.
> > 
> > Fortunately, the DocBook stylesheets contain a workaround for this case:
> > they detect the special .g number register, which is set only when using
> > groff, and they define a special macro for apostrophes based on whether
> > or not it is set and use that macro to write out the proper character.
> > As a result, the DocBook stylesheets handle all cases correctly
> > automatically, whether the user is using groff or not, unlike our
> > GNU_ROFF code.
> > 
> > Additionally, this functionality was implemented in 2010.  Since nobody
> > is shipping security support for an operating system that old anymore,
> > we can just safely assume that the user has upgraded their system in the
> > past decade and remove the GNU_ROFF option and its corresponding
> > stylesheet altogether.
> 
> I'm not sure of all that, but my machine uses Arch Linux, it ships with
> groff, I've never used GNU_ROFF=1, and I can copy text with apostrophes
> from the genrated man pages just fine.

I'll rephrase to be clearer.  Solaris 10 is still security supported,
but no major Linux distro is, and I think we'll be both be fine dropping
support for OSes shipped in 2005.

I'm glad to hear confirmation that things work for you, though.
-- 
brian m. carlson (he/him or they/them)
Houston, Texas, US

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