Re: [Groff] underlining

[Mike Bianchi]

On Sat, Jul 12, 2014 at 02:21:58PM +0100, Ralph Corderoy wrote:
> > Actually, why not?  I'd like to argue that request names carry with
> > them an "implied contract" as to their function, and "ul" stands for
> > underline, so that's what it should be used for.

It _does_ stand for "underline", in the original nroff, predating troff.
The choice to have it mean italic in troff was so all those man pages
and documents would still format, but look "better". 

Again:  "Backward Compatible" translates as "All Bugs Are Preserved".

I believe the "implied contract" of groff over the years is that most documents
will format as they did way back when they were first written.

I vote for  .underline  (or the like) to exist as a standard groff feature in
some macro package(s) or another.

-- 
 Mike Bianchi