Hi Alejandro,
On Fri Dec 20, 2024 at 12:39 AM CET, Alejandro Colomar wrote:
> I prefer \[lq] and \[rq] over .QS and .QE. BTW, that's that '*' mean?
That's string interpolation syntax. From groff(7):
Strings
groff supports strings primarily for user convenience.
Conventionally, if one would define a macro only to interpolate
a small amount of text, without invoking requests or calling any
other macros, one defines a string instead. Only one string is
predefined by the language.
\*[.T] Contains the name of the output device (for
example, “utf8” or “pdf”).
The .ds request creates a string with a specified name and
contents.
I assume the reason for using the strings `lq` and `rq` instead of
characters of the same name is that the strings can be defined
differently based on the current locale, so that English users get
\[lq] and \[rq] while German users get \[Bq] and \[lq] etc.
~ onf
