Hi Ralph, > Historically, CSTR 54, page 7, shows that \` is equivalent to \(ga and > gives a grave accent, as distinct from ` which just gives plain `.
Where plain ` at one point was an opening quote mark, I assume... What worries me is cases such as command substitution, e.g. ls -l `find -type f -name *foo*` -- the main concern being that if a user copies an example, then it should simply work. Currently, on UTF-8 locales, groff renders ` as an opening quote mark, but the user's shell will complain if they use that. It's easy enough to update man pages to use \`, but it seems to me that old man pages were correct to use plain `. -- Stuart Brady
