ksh.1 (again) - fix '|' implementation - hard to see - hard to find --

[aabatpurdue]

Description of problem:
I did a man path/ksh.1 and then searched for the | character. Couldn't find even one. Upon examination, I found that \(bv was being used for |. Changed them to an explicit |. groff_char(7) indicates that is the way to go. There are also several \| instances but I was unsure what they were being used for so I left them. There are several |\|| instances that are displayed as || and I did not check to see if I could find them as || in the man page.

Fixed one typo also. There is a second one in that typo's vicinity but, of course, I lost its position (:@{).

Ksh version:
September 3rd clone.

How reproducible:
n/a

Steps to reproduce:

1. man path/ksh.1

Actual results:
Could't find |.

Expected results:
Could find |.

Additional info:
Oops forgot to point to this patch kshman2_patch.txt

[krader1961]

I can find three vertical-pipe symbols when I run nroff -man src/cmd/ksh93/ksh.1. Which is far fewer than I would expect and see in the ksh93u+ man page. So obviously the ksh team made some ill-advised change.

[krader1961]

So obviously the ksh team made some ill-advised change.

I take that back. The raw man page in both ksh93u+ and ksh93v- (on which the current code in this project is based) are identical with respect to this issue. Running both files through nroff -man only yields three literal vertical bars. It's been so long since I've had to debug issues with roff man page source I had forgotten that nroff -man /usr/local/share/man/man1/ksh.1 is not the same as man /usr/local/share/man/man1/ksh.1. When I do the latter all the expected vertical bars can be found.

So, @aabatpurdue, this appears to be a quirk of your system. Perhaps you are using a CJK or similar locale. But the ksh man page source is fundamentally the same between now and the last public release. And looking at both man page source files I see exactly the same discrepancy between the number of vertical bars I can find after running the file through nroff -man and just man. Thus I do not think we should apply your patch. At least not without a lot more discussion.

[krader1961]

Looking at the man page source it appears the three places I can see a literal vertical-bar in the nroff -man src/cmd/ksh93/ksh.1 output are the only ones to use a literal ASCII vertical-bar. All the other places use \bv. So the question is whether those three places should be changed to \bv or all the \bv uses changed to a ASCII vertical-bar.

[aabatpurdue]

@krader1961 - Hmmm. On Cygwin I just tried again using a July 27 clone and the ksh.1.gz that I installed from it. With both the file and the installed man page using man, I found just your three vertical bars. The same with nroff -mandoc (<-- default macro package used by man) and nroff -man of the ./src/cmd/ksh93/ksh.1 file. I also used vim to examine the raw roff file and found only three. It was very interesting because I could see a vertical bar in vims page but could not get vim to acknowledge its existence.

As far as I know, I have done nothing exotic. Most all of everything is default. I am using mintty with a 11pt consolas font. TERM=xterm-256color. Can you suggest anything else I might look for? One problem may be that I do not have a specific locale set. The nroff output is probably utf8 and the \(bv would not be rendered as an ascii |. Hey, I knew that if I talked long enough that I could find a solution. If I set LC_ALL=C in the environment I can find all of the |.

Unfortunately, without the patch that still leaves a man page that will have similar problems if the user does not have the locale set properly.

And to get personal - punched cards? You must be almost as old as I am (:-}). I sure wasted a lot of paper and cardboard back in those days.

[krader1961]

If I set LC_ALL=C in the environment I can find all of the |.

That implies there is a problem with the locale subsystem on your platform. As the C/POSIX locale should be the default locale if no locale environment vars (e.g., LANG, LC_ALL) are defined.

Yes, I'm a grey beard. I started programming in high school in 1977 and used both model 33 KSR teletype for learning BASIC then punched cards for FORTRAN. I was still working with punch cards (albeit not very much) in the early 1980's.

[aabatpurdue]

I believe that the default locale is utf8 for Cygwin. I think I read that somewhere. Unfortunately, some processes think utf8 and others think C.

Shouldn't use this for interpersonal communication but don't have an email address for you. I was a graduate student in Engineering Geology at Purdue in 1967 when one of my advisors suggested that I take a beginning FORTRAN programming course. Boy, talk about love at first bite. I then graduated to assembly language and that knowledge of assembly language is what eventually got me a job as a systems administrator (called a pud programmer back then) with the Research Computing group at Purdue. I held that job in various guises from 1974 to 2012. FWIW - I also got my MS degree.

[krader1961]

I'm going to close this as a duplicate of #507 since we have embarked on the task of converting all documentation to reStructuredText + Sphinx format. That makes this issue moot.