Hi folks,
This issue was originally raised by a user who could not use the 'which(1)' man
page example commands by copying and pasting into the shell.
Investigation revealed that the which package build required indent as a git
submodule to use indent texinfo2man(.c) to generate the man page source.
Package indent texinfo2man.c texinfo to man page converter does not seem to
handle option -o or --option dashes or any word with leading dashes in literal
text brackets, or embedded dashes in for example
@code/kd/key/samp/verb/env/file/command/option/indicateurl/email/example/verbatim/verbatiminclude
such that users can copy and paste the text into a file to compile or command
line to execute and have it run successfully.
In order to do so, the dash (Unicode U+002D HYPHEN-MINUS) in man pages must be
escaped by a preceding escape character '\[ec]' by default '\' as '\-' to be
rendered by `groff -man` (or `mdoc` AFAIK) as text '-' otherwise it is
interpreted as a hyphen and rendered as '‐' U+2010 HYPHEN.
Interestingly, your indent.1 synopsis uses escaped '\-' rendered as expected,
while your option definitions do not, rendered as hyphens:
.B "indent "
\-\-version
.SH "DESCRIPTION"
--
.TP
.B -version\fR
Output the version number of \fBindent\fR.
.br
You may want to consider the advice and renderings in groff(7), groff_char(7),
and groff_rfc1345(7) and the input characters uses within literal text brackets,
especially also *quotes* which had issues in the past.
Dumping four UTF-8 hyphen code points and character strings - second is zero
width SOFT HYPHEN entered with *COMPOSE* pseudo-key:
$ utf8cp - ‐ ‑
- U+00002d 2d
U+0000ad c2 ad
‐ U+002010 e2 80 90
‑ U+002011 e2 80 91
[I have not yet investigated whether `texi2any --docbook | docbook2man` or some
other pipeline might give a better rendering?] ;^>
--
Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis Calgary, Alberta, Canada
La perfection est atteinte Perfection is achieved
non pas lorsqu'il n'y a plus rien à ajouter not when there is no more to add
mais lorsqu'il n'y a plus rien à retrancher but when there is no more to cut
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
