DMARC-Filter: OpenDMARC Filter v1.4.2 delorie.com 614J3WF7607638
DMARC-Filter: OpenDMARC Filter v1.4.2 sourceware.org 785724BA2E09
Message-ID: <2eb7528d-babd-4bc8-9c0d-b2f77499a627@towo.net>
Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2026 20:03:07 +0100
MIME-Version: 1.0
User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird
Subject: Re: [FLAC 1.5.0-1] Man pages use HYPHEN character instead of
 HYPHEN-MINUS.
To: cygwin@cygwin.com
References: <CAAA95V9-WVQh5hbOvtZhCOBU8JpmfR98E+=aQyeOa+b1H2S_-Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <bb351b4c-cf88-4480-b58a-46301a084c17@SystematicSW.ab.ca>
Autocrypt: addr=towo@towo.net; keydata=
 xsDNBGNaf3QBDACVevqudcTSevLThXKQPU1QpaDxtGuYjtwmr7i9wXxVGih4Y4oxOJN4PYlu
 KBX9IVAI4651dA+xYtXuyIkWOPZWyyzkGKavQOn3Q7dk09oj7bh2IwOndpxXXde337D408EQ
 bQEGbMHr9lOWhSAideowzgCeFIvGTf2AovbPh97HpexJn1/HCRiRAhTNlrkS1DByUgCAeEMK
 fEr6aGM/Ou29MT+eTnQwOIZTnl9Z9LxM2FtqqMH3MycC7I2OoW3XXhuL8BPQdyJUjWa0/J11
 Oo5jFkRXtWenIns6jGn18oW72jnDmo9jXwwS+iZWAV6Y51nhD7jSC+3xs9ORmPCdtHUSpTr1
 zh67UueUJ3DUUNVuA25Hn/9EJMJ2L60BGUEr88NEB6pcZhmcwdkurAQeYT6t+frzBz2ctsoN
 BoxP/Xc02yd+z7hXWRRMrJWh9WHlQHA3Z4FfmyNhyPhs3MgKTJ1E9QfzGquigAmF3/k/Dc1m
 7cSOKhGYhpEJdSpdXccJFKkAEQEAAc0cVGhvbWFzIFdvbGZmIDx0b3dvQHRvd28ubmV0PsLB
 BwQTAQgAMRYhBHUiRKsHn5d8BpWdP8bz0e72Bp0CBQJjWn93AhsDBAsJCAcFFQgJCgsFFgID
 AQAACgkQxvPR7vYGnQKSMAv8Di+8MXB2mcfsemRdShfLLKcLOv+d0CXAtPVaY3XKxbKpRvC9
 +AAT5wIHYjQft77/b2y87vGIh+nQ5hKLtNtQPSDtqG/Igkb5jAXpLi28fSUzgM96DvARmwve
 5wSnAU3prxH+Y63YpOpslEcGMRoEtYCDy1ANMYPcEZT/YvDd4CplyyEai4VYrw3/LsESDYlY
 GK6uMQzZ1jl2cNOUFu6BwLUeZIcwaqGto8n4R4nbf4jxUEpa21bWBPqE+Jf49uipjPr/iJ72
 5HbdWuuCfyTTJEJjfNEBigWP2RXM9iNDcO61V3aEjh76tThfBK2MMlLWfZkQaQziu24x8R4B
 I0efJYWBX2Sv2qnsH/EWj7FUIZjRqGG7LnWHLShfG6yjSOTOWYi8BbsvoftpaLWgZX28aGX4
 uzuSZ5L0caXh/pr/gSgqoH/YbuFIgqtQH4seOBgTybd22Vpe78rnc+8450pN8qwchHAZaJka
 UxS0SpYxXzXmHUKILA4C43s0U/z2Mez9zsDNBGNaf3cBDADeJ7paMrb6f1+k8wM7tyk0/Ded
 KX/pOejt/D20Ceerw2iL/4tUmBL+A3ic2yjiSFUSsEfHwgCVwKrn4MwZtkesdiphm2lk6xWc
 k1ENCQy44QwQT6UZ/mHWYWcj5LS6ua183x1zdn9iF3lv150nm/ssw56D7USz/ap1Vh0lf5te
 D+CIheGLocVDqxWiu7rHP8jKRWFgq/+OU6HKX8p2Yv1oYsykh9qF2bFzawLDS+S1VbfRicfD
 G0RtceL/BAf7b6UE5u9TGdfrFEa2TKZeS/FS/ViKUfwsXQIki1sWt2FQENbuDY28vxyR46ZZ
 0gixDCFUoBw5pkmOGVQa+1RQYrRqlN4X0CAgp7mFVeEHl5NTgiL1bemkQVmHOUDG+CzNg+Lk
 UGoedAtT672l3JjrnSs4j8zNshpgV2OfAhAC+V9XvqCjMnxzVfXkVlbuWpPfUWQeFclLGg8P
 agpQUE0Ux+VV4DoeQCxYEnRCf/n7n+IRfILj5+2l6Zw4M7zSu6ii0tUAEQEAAcLA9gQYAQgA
 IBYhBHUiRKsHn5d8BpWdP8bz0e72Bp0CBQJjWn97AhsMAAoJEMbz0e72Bp0CQr4L/REdT0SF
 mbapnZIe92THCdtAUgwEv8VdNiNFBJelz8P/fuXuNPtisYvQQD4e64zpWe2UC4Cxo9DUk/pW
 6Qci1xaXRKEiSPjHdSGGVB1PFIcqiS75GCf/ga/Dnfsy0Y4Uh6OGTQnkvZLBCe3vvcVLDQ7F
 PuV79zA9/eOeOW6aGoO6bq/wH+z96f9LyTITkQDy07fm6JYTGuzAoJE2AEboU1mgbtlx+tAa
 QFkpAQkp2g1Vhc3A7k4vntlHOrjMC+uVFh7QTGFfIlLRF6izUjSe6EZ06LErzlIiE05RP3yF
 FSRWidW0wze26peYlxYVgH1+T9wMTW2oiTBybfAMHBAxUP7Gr1WUo/oJEr0srWhatz8AwydP
 y7NwFbdpYn0NcFBaIlLW/JL11Eovwlivow+oGpzGFuuzSuflp2q9s2JWtn4EhW0kEs93D0LP
 iuJWvRaCZ6aD3uF3FMW8wyVWZYsLrzune2jH8w/uKMprDEOGOm+BcyhEFedTyY1ygbZKl+0G kQ==
In-Reply-To: <bb351b4c-cf88-4480-b58a-46301a084c17@SystematicSW.ab.ca>
UI-OutboundReport: notjunk:1;M01:P0:jT8wZUbUo4M=;J9rsk82+vQTZLfmHufSZl42Jj2B
 QdnITcBsa3lUAhZmsh1qXqKeqMGc+Kk5oyCR7b5j1/W192tGYGKOLFdhJgPUYwtNGQBDTU2Lr
 6+y7Hw4wFIzcJ9YgPmMZlYFA5RUj2XqQwea08FK5fCETcXkf/qkh1q5nyaOXul/v1wtSrAO9e
 Smz2yXx7vEfQQbhUBOfFmJTMMy0mGnTUyI+c8jpGBvu44wLgrtyBUKXj7LWnrDRCZl6BoTTGY
 MuK7uI9e041HtdXcPFhBli90zLGHa9IFWRkNWWBMDzxbwYxCcWJzDmqNrvWqp2pX5x+YL7T+Y
 wAfpIxWoWT98NGbK523F2xQlYmDK5fBHTZHFY0hmyFGauIQJNP/XtNPixqVGq0xyyn7l0jKsr
 r0C/TgZCNPA+AHk/po/HZ28miPdOTUJJlcJxOFplWEnNOPaWGPZUIyHMEoIz7l8a1OMFMjUHB
 OMf5i0wf2LJmrCvN/VoN/RMulwzjMtGRIfW29O/gPLkTEMMBS6tCnyUddE9CVcBSytHqCXl5L
 EcPlTqmsBnBCUwHdduil+sdudO9Lkiy5eMpVS+Wn7TvcNizzMnhxQw36vm/M3t/0KxnLyHCpX
 j+NvuHDCB+cZrLEHB+EduE8nKeZ2VKd/oMTBbkidB/DoTC19EqjUluza+jmrdUygm419mPHSP
 eMfw60ZJnWPEDzHl63Qeg8CpVOxEfsXnp/H+94Ho+vZ180wLpPhUrQlhst7J19eqHCciVyEGP
 r9qliPrIs+2stVTKNT+eVjtMKBVWY/ti+wJ/oEw31ucyED5Epswo+hjTTvvee9pRRvJt+NAMu
 3SWnShJjwLhYnCBe28ewwSd24uQisy7oW01FFrhyh0w62ouu3+6DkJgOBh/aglSExsKXc8tUR
 mFA49Mc5Pvlo9gVdlMq5nErUviaKzfmAXFaH/ctwva7bkx/NOncB3GxPOMchQgZ9KnM6/8qOH
 SQU6iTLmFJlsvCkuHmrM4IrT49p8clv91iKPhnxBiqRTD1qD3wuOMjEhpfB/KfrG1x6dlpuwV
 sMMWzts/BAkRGSaiWc8Ka67UDgeXJCaru//niATJ7koqReizDJNLvknKblOx1ap/KtsPPRBZq
 sroo8h3B8z4Ab1PxsLZJ8UuW3iu5plKctBGOWlfYzp0JjKOWUA5Jm2zPAqanQxuxQn3R0qsI8
 7CRhu03Se/pFWtktpbHIybFWrLLIAvfY2t9hjKR3ijWSxvSbZ2oMDhJFvPCPHNBpvn6VDqVA+
 tGjdV2IAnYsgsBBhA4Hql/vE5x1CpM3Y5gB6+FXw+ggbRELUChnWQuSftGSJvM90ke8D5mfUr
 BaeSX3tjKSjqk7eCkEsb9QSG7vA3zVdW5nF/v8oOcB+5kyiPm2fu9m0dAMZT8gQmhfFlKRgzA
 STSXVWzz2K0VNDw67RjauIV7Ps1e6Cn1DaUtSGQZmGClUR+ETEJDUbGbOKMZyu2cybRr0KVhW
 9/GWPrK5YvvZcXHbtRzxCpVXKnEuWU0FYJvfkBRbcAHXr//+g0otk2bZiU4dpIEuw4JxeyqnJ
 ao3rstBQHIueusbOkDdooVbT4yJugE+FMJhTnZmQvn2IYFSO9lJiS0TvOANieKRxshUAe9+2k
 gRZ/KSPZnRFQCfpO4DN21HakrmTnCQNqiAk56FuxYkxVIJWPyybU+kqxiHPODNhRYuPkLzDBA
 lZadCYRMLIyOLcji+eZ01tOARmkElpyV2xIgFvC9PDiZ+oitLwiLIIVQbiwyTXRpEgz9hZzSC
 q/l5ZdYln1nHy
Precedence: list
From: Thomas Wolff via Cygwin <cygwin@cygwin.com>
Reply-To: Thomas Wolff <towo@towo.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"; Format="flowed"
Errors-To: cygwin-bounces~archive-cygwin=delorie.com@cygwin.com
Sender: "Cygwin" <cygwin-bounces~archive-cygwin=delorie.com@cygwin.com>
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

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'

Thomas

>
> 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]
> ```
>
> [pasted upstream also but can not reopen issue!]
>


-- 
Problem reports:      https://cygwin.com/problems.html
FAQ:                  https://cygwin.com/faq/
Documentation:        https://cygwin.com/docs.html
Unsubscribe info:     https://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple