At 2017-04-30T21:06:12+0100, Ralph Corderoy wrote: > Hi Branden, > > > > > Also, the linitan(1) tool that is a huge part of Debian package QA > > > > checks man pages for many problems, and I think this is one of > > > > them. > > > > > > I had a look at https://lintian.debian.org/tags-all.html, searching > > > for `manpage', but didn't spot it? > ... > > Here are some manpage-related lintian tags. Make sure you let that > > huge page finish loading before searching. > > Yes, I did. Sorry, I was talking specifically about `-' and `\-' WRT > Debian's bodge and it working towards fixing it. If Ingo's realignment > goes ahead so we've a clear target then perhaps Lintian can learn some > new transgressions.
I'm working up a man(7) style guide that is sure to be completely
uncontroversial. <beat>
Here is the relevant material from it.
Note that this is related to but independent of Ingo's proposal. My
preference is not to refer to \- as a minus sign at all, but that bears
on documentation, not his proposed mapping per se.
Hyphens, dashes, and minus signs
As noted above, use a simple hyphen when you mean a
hyphen, as in phrases like “best‐known”. Use an en‐
dash, \[en], to express a range of numbers; for example,
“please allow 4–6 weeks for delivery”. Use an em‐dash,
\[em], to express a structural aside—somewhat like this—
in a sentence. Use \[mi] to obtain a mathematical minus
sign.
Finally, use \- to represent the much‐overloaded
“hyphen‐minus” at code point decimal 45 in the ASCII,
ISO 8859, and Unicode character sets. It is best to
think of \- as a piece of meta‐punctuation that has only
technical and contextual meaning, usually in textual
human/computer interface discussions (programming lan‐
guages, Unix‐style command‐line options, and so on).
Two important use cases for \- are (1) to separate the
name of a man page from its summary in the “Name” sec‐
tion; and (2) to indicate the hyphen‐minus character as
terminal input or output in Unix command names or com‐
mand‐line options.
Regards,
Branden
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