Favor the very old `lq` and `rq` extension _strings_ over special
characters of the same name. This fixes missing punctuation and text
when rendering this document with DWB and Solaris 10 nroffs, and
misrendered text with Plan 9 nroff.
Before (DWB, Solaris 10):
discovery mode (also known as explore mode). -D will start
the game in debug mode (also known as wizard mode) after
changing the character name to wizard, if the player is
allowed. Otherwise it will switch to -X. Control of who is
allowed to use debug mode is done via the
Before (Plan 9):
discovery mode (also known as explore mode). -D will start
the game in debug mode (also known as wizard mode) after
changing the character name to lqwizardrq, if the player is
allowed. Otherwise it will switch to -X. Control of who is
allowed to use debug mode is done via the lqWIZARDS=rq line in
NetHack's sysconf file.
After (all):
The -X option will start the game in a special non-scoring
discovery mode (also known as explore mode). -D will start
the game in debug mode (also known as wizard mode) after
changing the character name to "wizard", if the player is
allowed. Otherwise it will switch to -X. Control of who is
allowed to use debug mode is done via the "WIZARDS=" line in
NetHack's sysconf file.
(There are minor differences in the page offset amount, and Plan 9 uses
UTF-8 double quotation marks, U+201C and U+201D.)
groff_man(7):
Strings
The following strings are defined for use in man pages. None of
these is necessary in a contemporary man page; see
groff_man_style(7). ...
...
\*(lq
\*(rq interpolate special character escape sequences for left and
right double‐quotation marks, \(lq and \(rq, respectively.
(I see that I should reword the foregoing to something like "None is
necessary in man pages targeting only contemporary *roff formatters".)
History
... 4BSD (1980) added lq and rq strings. ... Unix System V (1988)
incorporated the lq and rq strings.
Except for EX/EE, James Clark implemented the foregoing features in
early versions of groff. ... Plan 9 from User Space’s troff ...
incorporated the lq and rq strings in 2025.
groff_man_style(7):
Notes
Some tips on composing and troubleshooting your man pages follow.
...
• When and how should I use quotation marks?
As noted above in subsection “Font style macros”, apply quotation
marks to “brief specimens of literal text, such as article
titles, inline examples, mentions of individual characters or
short strings, and (sub)section headings in man pages”. Multi‐
word literals, such as Unix commands with arguments, when set
inline (as opposed to displayed between EX and EE), should be
quoted to ensure that the boundaries of the literal are clear
even when the material is stripped of font styling by, for
example, copy‐and‐paste operations. groff, Heirloom Doctools
troff, neatroff, and mandoc support all of the special characters
\[oq], \[cq], \[lq], \[rq], \[aq], and \[dq] described in
subsection “Portability” above. DWB, Plan 9, and Solaris troffs
do not. Interpolating the strings \*(lq and \*(rq portably
yields directional double quotation marks, if available, in all
these formatters (though neatroff does not supply a man macro
package), but they cannot reliably be used in macro arguments.
Per the final sentence above, do a little dance to avoid using these
strings in macro arguments.
G. Branden Robinson
14430511bd