Bug#554897: lintian: [new check] \' groff escape sequence incorrectly used to denote apostrophe

[Jakub Wilk]

Package: lintian
Version: 2.2.17
Severity: wishlist

Many manual pages use the \' groff sequence with the intention to
express an apostrophe. This is incorrect, as \' in rendered as an acute
accent. It would be nice if lintian detected such cases.

Related bug: #507673.

--
Jakub Wilk



--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-lint-maint-REQUEST@...
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@...

[Russ Allbery-2]

Jakub Wilk <ubanus@...> writes:

> Many manual pages use the \' groff sequence with the intention to
> express an apostrophe. This is incorrect, as \' in rendered as an acute
> accent. It would be nice if lintian detected such cases.

> Related bug: #507673.

Hm, any ideas on how to tell when an acute accent really was intended?  Or
is that rare enough that it's very unlikely?

--
Russ Allbery (rra@...)               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>



--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-lint-maint-REQUEST@...
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@...

[Jakub Wilk]

* Russ Allbery <rra@...>, 2009-11-07, 10:54:
>> Many manual pages use the \' groff sequence with the intention to
>> express an apostrophe. This is incorrect, as \' in rendered as an acute
>> accent. It would be nice if lintian detected such cases.
>
>> Related bug: #507673.
>
>Hm, any ideas on how to tell when an acute accent really was intended?  Or
>is that rare enough that it's very unlikely?

Most likely it was not intended. :) The only legitimate use of that
character I am aware of is being a part of a character map like:

groff(7)
groff_char(7)
iso-8859-1(7)

According to Markus Kuhn[1], "[t]he acute and grave accent characters
[...] have no common use in European text."

[1] http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/apostrophe.html

--
Jakub Wilk



--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-lint-maint-REQUEST@...
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@...