[bug #60790] [tbl] does not sufficiently document valid tab() characters

[G. Branden Robinson]

URL:
  <https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?60790>

                 Summary: [tbl] does not sufficiently document valid tab()
characters
                 Project: GNU troff
            Submitted by: gbranden
            Submitted on: Thu 17 Jun 2021 04:25:15 PM UTC
                Category: Preprocessor tbl
                Severity: 3 - Normal
              Item Group: Documentation
                  Status: None
                 Privacy: Public
             Assigned to: None
             Open/Closed: Open
         Discussion Lock: Any
         Planned Release: None

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Details:

Oliver Corff noted on the groff mailing list:

"For the global option "tab(x)", the man page says:

tab(x) Use the character x instead of a tab to separate items in a line
of input data.

This works as long as x is a 7-bit ascii character, it does not work
with utf-8 characters. E.g.: "tab(|)" (with the pipe symbol) works,
"tab(¦)" does not work and yields the message: "argument to `tab' option
must be a single character".

I suggest either specifying "7-bit ascii character" in the manpage
and/or make the tbl parser utf8-aware."

Support for UTF-8 input would be a major feature, and probably major work, and
would require either preconv-ish rewriting of non-ASCII glyphs as special
character escapes on output, or the UTF-8-ification of troff(1) itself.

Probably best to document.  See what non-printing characters (C0 controls)
tbl(1) will also accept to tab().

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff/2021-06/msg00057.html




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