[Docutils-develop] [docutils:bugs] #481 manpage: please stop converting text to full capitals

[engelbert g. <gr...@us...>]

- **status**: open --> open-fixed



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**[bugs:#481] manpage: please stop converting text to full capitals**

**Status:** open-fixed
**Labels:** manpage writer 
**Created:** Wed Mar 27, 2024 01:12 AM UTC by G. Branden Robinson
**Last Updated:** Wed Mar 27, 2024 11:17 AM UTC
**Owner:** engelbert gruber


*mandoc* maintainer Ingo Schwarze and I (*groff* lead developer) reached a consensus a few years ago that man pages should stop shouting.  This is a historical artifact of practices at Bell Labs in the 1970s.

It also can, reportedly, create accessibility problems, since a screen reader may pronounce words in FULL CAPS letter by letter instead of reading them as words.  (The KDE screen reader I tried with a PDF didn't do this.)

In _groff_ 1.23.0, this behavior is configurable, and the user can turn the full-caps conversion on at rendering time.  With _man-db_, these options can be passed in via the ``MANROFFOPT`` environment variable.

~~~
     -rCS=1   Set section headings (the argument(s) to .SH) in full
              capitals.  This transformation is off by default because
              it discards case distinction information.

     -rCT=1   Set the man page identifier (the first argument to .TH) in
              full capitals in headers and footers.  This transformation
              is off by default because it discards case distinction
              information.
~~~


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