Mail Archives: cygwin/2026/02/05/06:14:35

Backwoods BC via Cygwin <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com> · Thu, 5 Feb 2026 03:11:19 -0800

On Wed, Feb 4, 2026 at 3:23 PM Dr Bean via Cygwin <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com> wrote:
>
> On Wed, 04 Feb 2026, Brian Inglis via Cygwin wrote:
>
> > On 2026-02-04 12:03, Thomas Wolff via Cygwin wrote:
> > > Am 04.02.2026 um 18:10 schrieb Brian Inglis via Cygwin:
> > > > On 2026-02-04 02:56, Vincent via Cygwin wrote:
> > > > > My request is related to an issue I opened in the FLAC Github :
> > > > > https://github.com/xiph/flac/issues/861
>
> > > > > After some investigations, the issue is related to the build release of the
> > > > > FLAC package provided by Cygwin : the man pages of flac(1) and metaflac(1)
> > > > > use the HYPHEN (U+2010 )  character instead of the HYPHEN-MINUS (U+002D)
> > > > > character.
>
> > > > > These two commands expect HYPHEN-MINUS character, so if you copy-paste the
> > > > > man page options in your terminal, it will fail.
>
> > > > > Example : flac ‐‐version
> > > > > will return an error : « can't open input file ‐‐version: No such file or
> > > > > directory », because of  « ‐‐version » with HYPHEN copied-pasted from the
> > > > > man pages.
>
> > > > > The right string is « --version » with HYPHEN-MINUS (U+002D).
>
> > > > > Example : flac --version
> > > > > will return : « flac 1.5.0 »
>
> > > > > Please, feel free to read the issue in Github (
> > > > > https://github.com/xiph/flac/issues/861 ) for more details, as it's easier
> > > > > to read code and quotes with the markdown formatting.
>
> > > > > This is a very pretty nasty kind of bug, because it's very difficult to
> > > > > distinguish HYPHEN-MINUS and HYPHEN in a terminal. It's also very difficult
> > > > > to figure out why the command has failed, as the « No such file or
> > > > > directory » is not the root cause of the problem.
>
> > > > > I think a new build release to fix this, would be very welcome.
>
> > > > > Thank you very much for your time and your great work. :)
> > > It’s really a nuisance that man (presumably gnu man, but I don’t
> > > remember the details of a previous discussion) changed interpretation of
> > > some important characters into „glyphs“ that some witty people thought
> > > to be nice but are completely non-functional.
> > > It applies not only to „-“ but also to „~“. Look at `man bash` and
> > > search for bashrc and you'll see the tilde symbol replaced by an ugly
> > > superscript „small tilde“. Why??
> > > Package maintainers are forced to adapt their man pages and either
> > > replace all occurrences of these characters by corresponding escapes or
> > > apply these two global tricks per man page:
>
> > > .char ^ \(ha
> > > .char - \N'45'
>
> > It appears to be a consequence more of groff -man being upgraded to produce
> > better quality typographic output more consistently with other macro
> > packages, output devices, and more comprehensive font, character, and glyph
> > sets, while not penalizing the other existing macro packages originally
> > designed and intended to produce quality output: see groff(7),
> > groff_rfc1345(7), and groff_char(7), for example:
> > "The developers of AT&T /troff/ chose mappings for them that would be useful
> > for typesetting technical literature in a broad range of scientific
> > disciplines
> > ...
> > Keycap  Appearance and meaning   Special character and meaning
> >   "     " neutral double quote   \[dq] neutral double quote
> >   '     ’ closing single quote   \[aq] neutral apostrophe
> >   -     ‐ hyphen                 \- or \[-] minus sign/Unix dash
> >   \     (escape character)       \e or \[rs] reverse solidus
> >   ^     ˆ modifier circumflex    \(ha circumflex/caret/“hat”
> >   `     ‘ opening single quote   \(ga grave accent
> >   ~     ˜ modifier tilde         \(ti tilde"
>
> > Really this tension between compatibility with tty input and basic/draft and
> > typographic quality output has existed since the earliest days of
> > computerized text formatting and typesetting with various levels of higher
> > quality output devices from dot matrix, daisy wheel, phototypesetter,
> > electrostatic, laser, and higher quality rendering devices.
>
> > [Note: \N'#' refers to the current output font glyph index *NOT* an input code.]
>
> > > > Upstream sources seems to provide only .md man sources and no b-r
> > > > package for conversion (pandoc unavailable from Cygwin) so man pages
> > > > are generated for the upstream sources, and this conversion
> > > > generates man page options with plain text hyphen-minus, which are
> > > > treated by man as normal text *hyphen* `‐` not plain text *minus*
> > > > `-`.
> > > > In man pages you use escaped hyphen-minus `\fB\-v\fR` to treat them
> > > > as minus text `-` as used in options `-v`.
> > > > We see this use of unescaped hyphens in the upstream tar files,
> > > > below, so please complain upstream about their man page generation,
> > > > and reopen their issue:
> > > > ```
> > > > $ wget https://mirror.../x86_64/release/flac/flac-1.5.0-1-src.tar.xz
> > > > $ tar -xvf flac-1.5.0-1-src.tar.xz
> > > > flac-1.5.0-1.src/
> > > > flac-1.5.0-1.src/flac-1.5.0.tar.xz            # upstream sources
> > > > flac-1.5.0-1.src/FLAC.cygport
> > > > $ tar -xvf flac-1.5.0-1.src/flac-1.5.0.tar.xz flac-1.5.0/man/{,meta}flac.1
> > > > flac-1.5.0/man/flac.1
> > > > flac-1.5.0/man/metaflac.1
> > > > $ grep -m5 '\\f[[{]\?B[]}]\\\?-' flac-1.5.0/man/{,meta}flac.1
> > > > flac-1.5.0/man/flac.1:\f[B]-\f[R] \f[I]\&...\f[R] ]
> > > > flac-1.5.0/man/flac.1:\f[B]flac\f[R] [ \f[B]-d\f[R] |
> > > > \f[B]--decode\f[R] | \f[B]-t\f[R] |
> > > > flac-1.5.0/man/flac.1:\f[B]--test\f[R] | \f[B]-a\f[R] | \f[B]--analyze\f[R] ] [
> > > > flac-1.5.0/man/flac.1:\f[I]infile.ogg\f[R] | \f[B]-\f[R] \f[I]\&...\f[R] ]
> > > > flac-1.5.0/man/flac.1:\f[B]-d\f[R], analysis with \f[B]-a\f[R] or
> > > > testing with \f[B]-t\f[R].
> > > > flac-1.5.0/man/metaflac.1:\f[B]-o\f[R] \f[I]filename\f[R]\f[B],
> > > > --output- name=\f[R]\f[I]filename\f[R]
> > > > flac-1.5.0/man/metaflac.1:\f[B]--preserve-modtime\f[R]
> > > > flac-1.5.0/man/metaflac.1:\f[B]--with-filename\f[R]
> > > > flac-1.5.0/man/metaflac.1:\f[B]--no-filename\f[R]
> > > > flac-1.5.0/man/metaflac.1:\f[B]--no-utf8-convert\f[R]
> > > > ```
> > --
>
> My experience with the man page of `which`, which
> mirrors that of Vincent with FLAC
>
> http://drbean.sdf.org/LooksLikeHyphen.html

My experience is that this is a problem pretty much everywhere on the
'Net. Long ago I wrote a simple filter script to remove all
non-printing characters and CR and LF from the clipboard contents and
put the result back into the clipboard. I then display the contents
for a few seconds before closing the window. This won't properly deal
with Unicode in the copied data, but at least you can see that the
data is bogus.

As a Cygwin newbie long ago, I was constantly getting errors because
of spurious CR characters in copied text. Sometimes it was completely
non-obvious that this was the problem and it wasn't until I started
using my filter script regularly that I stopped getting mysterious
errors.

If someone wanted to write a clipboard "purifier" that would
de-Unicode and de-HTML the data, I'd be forever grateful. I wouldn't
have a clue how to go about this myself.

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Date:	Thu, 5 Feb 2026 03:11:19 -0800
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Subject:	Re: [FLAC 1.5.0-1] Man pages use HYPHEN character instead of
	HYPHEN-MINUS.
To:	Brian Inglis via Cygwin <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
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From:	Backwoods BC via Cygwin <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
Reply-To:	Backwoods BC <completely DOT and DOT totally DOT trash AT gmail DOT com>
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