Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Wed, 4 Aug 1999 11:27:59 -0400 (EDT)
From:      stanislav shalunov <shalunov@att.com>
To:        chuckr@picnic.mat.net
Cc:        freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: sgmlfmt: producing text files
Message-ID:  <199908041527.LAA18553@tuzik.lz.att.com>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.10.9908041048330.451-100000@picnic.mat.net> (message from Chuck Robey on Wed, 4 Aug 1999 10:52:37 -0400 (EDT))
References:   <Pine.BSF.4.10.9908041048330.451-100000@picnic.mat.net>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
> From: Chuck Robey <chuckr@picnic.mat.net>

> This post, and one other, seemed to be discussing changing
> formatting from troff to TeX, and included man pages, which have to
> be part of the main system, so I don't think I was off target.

Chuck,

I did not even mention manual pages.  I was talking about formatting
user-written SGML documents, and formatting them into formats other
than manual pages (namely, text-only).  Sgmlformat is in ports
collection, and I was discussing its use as a port, not as part of
base system (where did you get that?).  I didn't even know you have
any manual pages in SGML, to be honest (I know the handbook is in
SGML, but it's not being converted to manual pages, right?).

Nobody wants the man pages to go out in anything other than the
traditional format.

I did say that I value TeX formatting more than groff formatting.  For
*my* documents, not for manual pages.  And isn't it OK for me to
choose what puts spacing and breaks lines in my documents?  If my
wording was confusing and lead you to believe I am talking about
manual pages formatting, then once again, I am (was) not (but please
show me what made you believe so).

Your message didn't give me (or anyone else) any useful information
(like overcoming the problems with nroff that I listed), and was
pertinent to a subject I didn't mention or intend to discuss.
And this is not expression of anger, this is just a plain fact.  I do
not think you wanted your message to be helpful.

I didn't propose ``changing'' from troff to TeX, or anything like
that.  I was asking about including LaTeX as one of the output formats
(Jade seems to support LaTeX, so sgmlformat potentially could do this,
too).  If you like troff typesetting better, that's a matter of taste.
I would like the ability to use TeX's formatting capabilities for
producing PostScript, because the hyphenation algorithms and paragraph
formatting works better, in my opinion, in TeX than in groff.  It
doesn't mean that everyone else has to use TeX, or that it should be
used instead of troff, or, especially, nroff.

I talked about adding new capabilities to sgmlformat, which was useful
for me, and might be useful for others.  (Preparation of text versions
of FAQs for Usenet posting, etc.)

That's it.

--Stanislav


To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-ports" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199908041527.LAA18553>