Should manpages avoid using unicode characters like the m-dash ()?I've noticed most manpages use hyphens/minuses in their taglines where, I believe, an actual dash would have been more correct typographically.The man-page of the dash shell lives up to its name and uses a proper m-dash.I've filed a tentative pull request at https://github.com/rtomayko/ronn/pull/94 that fixes (?) this in ronn.Opinions?
Manpage typography and proper dashes
man;unicode
Unix man pages (using the man macros) used a single hyphen in the NAME section to separate the name from the description..SH NAMEsh \- command languageUnix documents and papers often used an em dash (\(em in troff) where appropriate.More recent man pages are based on the mdoc macros, and use an .Nd macro to output an em dash. For instance, dash's man page includes.Sh NAME.Nm dash.Nd command interpreter (shell)and the definition of .Nd is.de Nd.nop \[em] \$*..It's probably best to use either \(em or the .Nd macro, but you'd probably be OK using a UTF-8-encoded em dash instead.