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Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2026 23:22:32 +0000
To: Brian Inglis via Cygwin <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
Subject: Re: [FLAC 1.5.0-1] Man pages use HYPHEN character instead of
 HYPHEN-MINUS.
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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

-- 
Greg "Dr Bean" Matheson		God's review committee:
http://drbean.sdf.org		You've overloaded the reproductive
drbean AT freeshell DOT org		functions on the eliminatory functions!
				God: We'll fix it in software.
				

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