From owner-freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG Tue May 9 11:52:11 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.org Delivered-To: freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5703A16A402 for ; Tue, 9 May 2006 11:52:11 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from rdm@cfcl.com) Received: from cfcl.com (cpe-24-221-172-174.ca.sprintbbd.net [24.221.172.174]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id F033543D45 for ; Tue, 9 May 2006 11:52:10 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from rdm@cfcl.com) Received: from [192.168.254.205] ([192.168.254.205]) by cfcl.com (8.12.6/8.12.6) with ESMTP id k49Br5vF051328 for ; Tue, 9 May 2006 04:53:07 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from rdm@cfcl.com) Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: Date: Tue, 9 May 2006 04:52:06 -0700 To: freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.org From: Rich Morin Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Cc: Subject: semi-automated semantic markup? X-BeenThere: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Documentation project List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 09 May 2006 11:52:11 -0000 Several years ago, there was some discussion of ways to help automate the process of bringing "old style" man pages into the semantic markup fold. IIRC, all sorts of projects announced their intention to move to DocBook. However, it appears that most projects have chosen, instead, to stick with mandoc (or just to retain their random collection of man macros :-). Anyway, I'm wondering about the available tools for moving fairly arbitrary man pages to mandoc format. Although Eric Raymond's doclifter could be used to turn the pages into DocBook XML, and Steve Cheng's docbook2x can be used to emit troff, this seems like a rather convoluted approach. Comments, clues, suggestions? -r -- http://www.cfcl.com/rdm Rich Morin http://www.cfcl.com/rdm/resume rdm@cfcl.com http://www.cfcl.com/rdm/weblog +1 650-873-7841 Technical editing and writing, programming, and web development