On Fri Aug 12, 2022 at 6:10 PM EDT, G. Branden Robinson wrote: > Hi Ingo, > > At 2022-08-12T16:30:01+0200, Ingo Schwarze wrote: > > G. Branden Robinson wrote on Thu, Aug 11, 2022 at 03:17:14PM -0500: > > > At 2022-08-11T14:48:51+0200, Ingo Schwarze wrote: > > >> The former is portable and the latter is a GNU extension. > > > > > ...that is over 30 years old and supported by Heirloom Doctools > > > troff for 17 years now, neatroff for about six, and your mandoc for > > > three. > > > > Actually, mandoc supports \~ at least since Sep 17 2009: > > https://cvsweb.bsd.lv/mandoc/Attic/chars.in?rev=1.1&content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup > > Whoops! I regret the error, and will update groff's Texinfo manual to > correct this. > > > > plan9port troff doesn't either, and its laudable introduction > > > of a man(7) MR macro notwithstanding, its activity level is > > > not high. > > > > There are people using Plan 9 for practical work though, they have > > even occasionally posted on the groff and mandoc lists, so that is a > > bit more of a problem. > > […] But, if > that's what it takes to get this escape sequence de facto standardized, > and no one else will do it, that will move it up the priority queue. Have we ever considered a de jure *roff standard? If not, here are just some reasons: • [the obvious benefits of standardizing anything] • A standard could lead to more implementations because developers would not have to be intimately familiar with the {groff,heirloom,neatroff} toolchain before implementing a *roff toolchain themselves. • It could also lead to more users & use cases because existing users could count on systems supporting certain features, so they could use *roff in more situations, which would lead to more exposure. Cheers, -- DJ Chase They, Them, Theirs PS: It’s ridiculous that *roff isn’t part of POSIX when it was Unix’s killer feature.
