#457765 Shell quotes wrong in dash.1 man page in Unicode environment

Package:
dash
Source:
dash
Description:
POSIX-compliant shell
Submitter:
Jonathan Nieder
Date:
2011-10-05 04:27:04 UTC
Severity:
minor
#457765#5
Date:
2007-12-25 13:25:13 UTC
From:
To:
Shell quotes ' and ` are displayed wrong in dash.1 man page in Unicode
environment. Explanation:

In the groff syntax a non-escaped Ascii apostrophe (') is always logical
(English) right single quotation mark or apostrophe. In Unicode
environment (e.g. UTF-8 terminal or Postscript) it is displayed as
U+2019 RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK. In non-Unicode environment it is
displayed as U+0027 APOSTROPHE.

Similarly, in the groff syntax a non-escaped grave accent (`) is always
logical (English) left single quotation mark. In Unicode environment it
is displayed as U+2018 LEFT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK and in non-Unicode
environment as U+0060 GRAVE ACCENT.

When referreing to shell's single quote (') the groff character code
\(aq should always be used. It displays correctly in all environments.
Shell's command substitution mark (`) aka. "backtick" or "backquote"
must be written as \(ga in groff code.

Patch is attached to fix this in dash.1 man page. Patch file is meant to
be added to debian/diff directory and should apply nicely to Debian dash
package version 0.5.4-4.
#457765#10
Date:
2008-03-03 12:10:20 UTC
From:
To:
Hi Teemu, thanks for the patch.  But somehow I think there must be
another solution, wasn't there some discussion around this on
debian-devel@l.d.o?

Regards, Gerrit.
#457765#15
Date:
2008-03-03 12:58:19 UTC
From:
To:
Gerrit Pape kirjoitti:

I agree that this patch may not be a long-term solution. There are
sooooo many manpages with similar problems. Some manpages are made by
writing the (g)roff code directly, but many are constructed with some
kind of compiler.

I reported this issue to pseudo package "general" and indeed there was
some discussion on debian-devel:

http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2007/12/msg00717.html
#457765#20
Date:
2008-07-06 16:18:04 UTC
From:
To:
Hi Teemu, I don't know about the progress on this, but still think this
patch shouldn't be applied to the dash package

Thanks, Gerrit.
#457765#27
Date:
2008-07-06 17:20:58 UTC
From:
To:
Gerrit Pape wrote (2008-07-06 16:18 +0000):

Ok. But even if the patch might not be a good solution this bug's title
"Shell quotes wrong in dash.1 man page in Unicode environment" is still
perfectly valid. It's a fact that shell quotes (` in particular) are
wrong in the dash(1) man page. So it kind of feels wrong to close this
when the bug still exists. Not to say that I take it personally or mind
that much. :-)
#457765#40
Date:
2011-09-27 00:13:00 UTC
From:
To:
Teemu Likonen wrote:

Hi Teemu, I looked over the manpage and all the examples you pointed out
look fine now.  So I guess something happened elsewhere in the processing
chain.  However, there are some other bugs in its place, for example

	#	A `#' character specifying that the value should be
		printed in an ``alternative form''.

in the description of printf no longer uses “curly quotation marks”.
If you are still interested in this, I would welcome an updated patch.
#457765#45
Date:
2011-10-05 04:23:00 UTC
From:
To:
submitter 457765 !
quit

Forwarding (and hijacking the bug :)) with permission.  Thanks, Teemu.