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[bug #63354] Refine fallbacks.tmac


From: Dave
Subject: [bug #63354] Refine fallbacks.tmac
Date: Sun, 4 Dec 2022 09:50:57 -0500 (EST)

Follow-up Comment #10, bug #63354 (project groff):

And now... we should talk about U+2011, the character that has spilled the
most ink over in bug #58930.

In a nutshell, the problem is that U+2011 is, by definition, visually
identical to an ordinary hyphen (U+2010), a character which is frequently
kerned next to several uppercase letters.  But as currently implemented, the
U+2011 will never be kerned, because groff does not kern defined characters
(bug #59932).  Bug #63360 documents the U+2011 problem, but points out that
solving it is likely not simple, and thus can't be expected soon.

So the question is how to handle this in the meantime.  Much of the discussion
in 58930 resolved to "punt on this issue and see if the users complain," which
I agreed was reasonable in several edge cases.

I'm less comfortable with it in the U+2011 case, since the miskerning there
(a) is much commoner in ordinary text, and (b) may not be something a user
will complain about, per se, but that will subtly degrade the type
quality--something the groff user might not even notice but a reader of that
user's output might (from which we're unlikely to ever get a report back).

If the groff team decides this problem is worth addressing, the only
reasonable short-term solution, as far as I can see, is to follow bug #63332's
lead and comment out the \[u2011] line, marking it as requiring more R&D than
can be presently dedicated to it.  (The corresponding comment should point to
bug #63360, which is dedicated to this issue.)


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