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ID Category Severity Type Date Submitted Last Update
0001158 [1003.1(2013)/Issue7+TC1] Shell and Utilities Editorial Enhancement Request 2017-07-31 20:21 2019-02-28 15:06
Reporter safinaskar View Status public  
Assigned To
Priority normal Resolution Accepted  
Status Applied  
Name Askar Safin
Organization
User Reference
Section echo utility
Page Number 2674
Line Number 87119
Interp Status ---
Final Accepted Text
Summary 0001158: Please, use dashs (i. e. "-") consistently in the document and make it searchable
Description I use pdf of POSIX 2016 edition. I tried to find all utilities which threat "--" specially. So, I tried to search over all the document the string "--". But this search skipped some relevant places, for example p. 2674, l. 87119, echo utility.

Reason: because in that line we have two symbols "−" (i. e. U+2212 [hexademical, of course]) separated by space instead of ordinary "-" (U+002D).

So, please, always use real ASCII when you mean ASCII. Don't insert unnecessary spaces, i. e. spaces, which doesn't really mean spaces.

P. S. I used KDE Okular 0.26.1 to view the standard (KDE Development Platform 4.14.26), Debian package 4:16.08.2-1+b1.
Desired Action See above
Tags No tags attached.
Attached Files

- Relationships

-  Notes
(0003810)
nick (manager)
2017-07-31 20:38

The Unicode character "minus sign" is used throughout the standard except when the font in use is a constant width one.

Use of two minus signs separated by a space is used to visually appear as "--"; use of two hyphens without a space would run together and appear as a single - in the printed pdf.

The generated HTML, on the other hand, does use a hyphen, and can be easily searched for "--", except that you will need to get the entire standard (or at least all of XCU) as a single HTML file.
(0003811)
geoffclare (manager)
2017-08-01 08:32

I'm not sure whether Nick's "except when the font in use is a constant width one" was intended to imply that all dashes in constant width font are plain ASCII, but if so then it isn't true. It used to be true back when we used "real" troff, but with the switch to groff for the POSIX/SUS merge in 2001 some of them became Unicode minus sign. This was discussed on the mailing list last year (around the time we reissued C165 to fix the backquote problem) and is on my to-do list to sort out sometime.
(0004213)
shware_systems (reporter)
2019-01-17 16:00

Also, imo if they're running together visually this means the font used for the PDF is buggy (as in too tight a glyph bounding box), or the kerning tables groff uses with it; as hyphen is nominally an en-dash, not an em-dash or strikeout line that might be expected to run together in a fixed width font.
(0004271)
geoffclare (manager)
2019-02-28 15:06

This has now been fixed in the troff source.

- Issue History
Date Modified Username Field Change
2017-07-31 20:21 safinaskar New Issue
2017-07-31 20:21 safinaskar Name => Askar Safin
2017-07-31 20:21 safinaskar Section => echo utility
2017-07-31 20:21 safinaskar Page Number => 2674
2017-07-31 20:21 safinaskar Line Number => 87119
2017-07-31 20:38 nick Note Added: 0003810
2017-08-01 08:32 geoffclare Note Added: 0003811
2019-01-17 16:00 shware_systems Note Added: 0004213
2019-02-28 15:06 geoffclare Interp Status => ---
2019-02-28 15:06 geoffclare Note Added: 0004271
2019-02-28 15:06 geoffclare Status New => Applied
2019-02-28 15:06 geoffclare Resolution Open => Accepted


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