Re: Proposed: QS/QE macros for quotation in man(7)

[onf]

Hi Branden,

On Fri Dec 20, 2024 at 4:57 AM CET, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> At 2024-12-20T02:21:00+0100, onf wrote:
> > 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,
>
> If so, that was pretty forward-looking for Berkeley in 1980.
>
> > so that English users get \[lq] and \[rq] while German users get \[Bq]
> > and \[lq] etc.
>
> It's possible.  I think another possibility is that someone was annoyed
> by the way double quotation marks were spaced [...]

Okay, that sounds more plausible...

> [...] Before the BSD
> community decided upon the performative wokeness of rabid allergies to
> copyleft and (at OpenBSD at least) C++.

I kinda get where they are coming from with C++, though. Last time I
tried patching groff, I was fascinated by the stark difference between
groff's and neatroff's source code. The latter is just an order of
magnitude easier to navigate and understand. That may be more a
difference of coding style than the language itself, of course
(just look at Heirloom troff for a counter-example), but I feel
like the language also has an influence; for instance, the presence
of objects, each with its own methods, definitely made groff's source
code harder to navigate for me.

~ onf