diff mbox series

[v2,2/2] doc: remove GNU_ROFF option

Message ID 20210514003104.94644-3-sandals@crustytoothpaste.net (mailing list archive)
State New, archived
Headers show
Series Asciidoctor native manpage builds | expand

Commit Message

brian m. carlson May 14, 2021, 12:31 a.m. UTC
By default, groff converts apostrophes in troff source to Unicode
apostrophes.  This is helpful and desirable when being used as a
typesetter, since it makes the output much cleaner and more readable,
but it is a problem in manual pages, since apostrophes are often used
around shell commands and these should remain in their ASCII form for
compatibility with the shell.

Fortunately, the DocBook stylesheets contain a workaround for this case:
they detect the special .g number register, which is set only when using
groff, and they define a special macro for apostrophes based on whether
or not it is set and use that macro to write out the proper character.
As a result, the DocBook stylesheets handle all cases correctly
automatically, whether the user is using groff or not, unlike our
GNU_ROFF code.

Additionally, this functionality was implemented in 2010.  Since nobody
is shipping a mainstream Linux distribution with security support that
old anymore, we can just safely assume that the user has upgraded their
system in the past decade and remove the GNU_ROFF option and its
corresponding stylesheet altogether.

Signed-off-by: brian m. carlson <sandals@crustytoothpaste.net>
---
 Documentation/Makefile               |  8 --------
 Documentation/manpage-quote-apos.xsl | 16 ----------------
 Makefile                             |  4 ----
 3 files changed, 28 deletions(-)
 delete mode 100644 Documentation/manpage-quote-apos.xsl
diff mbox series

Patch

diff --git a/Documentation/Makefile b/Documentation/Makefile
index 891181c0f3..19dc5a2974 100644
--- a/Documentation/Makefile
+++ b/Documentation/Makefile
@@ -177,14 +177,6 @@  MAN_BASE_URL = file://$(htmldir)/
 endif
 XMLTO_EXTRA += -m manpage-base-url.xsl
 
-# If your target system uses GNU groff, it may try to render
-# apostrophes as a "pretty" apostrophe using unicode.  This breaks
-# cut&paste, so you should set GNU_ROFF to force them to be ASCII
-# apostrophes.  Unfortunately does not work with non-GNU roff.
-ifdef GNU_ROFF
-XMLTO_EXTRA += -m manpage-quote-apos.xsl
-endif
-
 ifdef USE_ASCIIDOCTOR
 ASCIIDOC = asciidoctor
 ASCIIDOC_CONF =
diff --git a/Documentation/manpage-quote-apos.xsl b/Documentation/manpage-quote-apos.xsl
deleted file mode 100644
index aeb8839f33..0000000000
--- a/Documentation/manpage-quote-apos.xsl
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,16 +0,0 @@ 
-<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
-		version="1.0">
-
-<!-- work around newer groff/man setups using a prettier apostrophe
-     that unfortunately does not quote anything when cut&pasting
-     examples to the shell -->
-<xsl:template name="escape.apostrophe">
-  <xsl:param name="content"/>
-  <xsl:call-template name="string.subst">
-    <xsl:with-param name="string" select="$content"/>
-    <xsl:with-param name="target">'</xsl:with-param>
-    <xsl:with-param name="replacement">\(aq</xsl:with-param>
-  </xsl:call-template>
-</xsl:template>
-
-</xsl:stylesheet>
diff --git a/Makefile b/Makefile
index e499152ba2..f186fd4753 100644
--- a/Makefile
+++ b/Makefile
@@ -278,10 +278,6 @@  all::
 # Define NO_ST_BLOCKS_IN_STRUCT_STAT if your platform does not have st_blocks
 # field that counts the on-disk footprint in 512-byte blocks.
 #
-# Define GNU_ROFF if your target system uses GNU groff.  This forces
-# apostrophes to be ASCII so that cut&pasting examples to the shell
-# will work.
-#
 # Define USE_ASCIIDOCTOR to use Asciidoctor instead of AsciiDoc to build the
 # documentation.
 #