README.manpages: Clarify that man-page source is ASCII.

[nmh] / docs / README.manpages

diff --git a/docs/README.manpages b/docs/README.manpages
index e266953c1a4f8f1b308f6e062ab3036c526dfa38..412ba9c4981105d93c5477fc1051181b4856969a 100644 (file)
--- a/docs/README.manpages
+++ b/docs/README.manpages
@@ -27,10 +27,10 @@ Troff Considerations
        When quoting, use \*(lq and \*(rq. This ensures correct
        formatting on typesetter-like devices.
 
-       Don't use UTF-8 characters in the manpage source.  We still
-       build and run on systems that can't handle this.  And most
-       anything you would want to use has an internal troff character
-       escape sequence, anyway.
+        A man page's source is ASCII, not UTF-8.  troff has escapes for
+        non-ASCII characters, e.g. \(em for an em-dash, U+2014, that are
+        mapped onto whatever the output device supports, e.g. UTF-8 or
+        PDF.
 
 
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