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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!godot!harvard!seismo!hao!cires!nbires!opus!rcd
From: rcd@opus.UUCP (Dick Dunn)
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards,net.text
Subject: nroff question on italics/underscore
Message-ID: <925@opus.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 29-Oct-84 22:51:15 EST
Article-I.D.: opus.925
Posted: Mon Oct 29 22:51:15 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 2-Nov-84 04:53:35 EST
Organization: NBI,Inc, Boulder CO
Lines: 15
Xref: godot net.unix-wizards:3413 net.text:164

I recently discovered that nroff underscores text (as when it's doing its
"italic" font) with '_' followed by \b followed by the character.  The
thing that seems odd is that it uses, literally, '_'.  It DOESN'T use the
character given for '_' in the mapping table (in /usr/lib/term/tabxyzzy),
nor does it use \(ru (rule) or \(ul (underrule)--the char constant is
hardwired into the code.

(This is on a 4.2 system, to the extent that might matter.)

Any idea why it's done this way?  In particular, any idea whether it was
intentional or just lazy?

-- 
Dick Dunn	{hao,ucbvax,allegra}!nbires!rcd		(303)444-5710 x3086
   ...Simpler is better.