Subject: Re: groff .ft command use in asciidoc

From: Jonathan Nieder <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Nov 2010 04:15:16 -0600

Hi,

Andi Kleen wrote:

> The git manpages on my opensuse 11.3 (git 1.7.1-1.14)
> frequently use the .ft command the opensuse groff does not 
> render.
> 
> For example from the final output of "man git-commit":
> 
>            .ft C
>            $ edit hello.c
>            $ git rm goodbye.c
>            $ git add hello.c
>            $ git commit
>            .ft

This is in my opinion a bug: unless you use ASCIIDOC_NO_ROFF, git's
asciidoc.conf will include raw roff directives in the docbook markup
it generates.  And then docbook will escape the periods, producing
the output you see.

The workaround is very simple: set ASCIIDOC_NO_ROFF to nonempty
when you build documentation.

I think the only reason this is not the default is that no one has
tested it with old DocBook XSL versions, but I'm not sure.
Documentation/Makefile has some notes about this.

Hope that helps,
Jonathan