Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2010 23:00:21 +0200 From: "Julian H. Stacey" <jhs@berklix.com> To: Erik Cederstrand <erik@cederstrand.dk> Cc: Julian Elischer <julian@elischer.org>, Steve Kargl <sgk@troutmask.apl.washington.edu>, freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Subject: Re: dwb : groff replacement proposal Message-ID: <201006302100.o5UL0L5X058705@fire.js.berklix.net> In-Reply-To: Your message "Wed, 30 Jun 2010 20:48:04 %2B0200." <877EF62B-D2BE-422F-8545-DBC63E5AA682@cederstrand.dk>
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> Den 30/06/2010 kl. 19.07 skrev Steve Kargl: > >=20 > > The fact remains that there is no available alternative that > > contains the functionality of groff. > > I still can't read from this discussion if FreeBSD base actually needs = > all the functionality that groff provides, and if the proposed = > alternatives are lacking needed functionality which cannot be worked = > around by simple changes to the distributed man-pages like the ones = > committed in the last weeks. > > I may be horribly misinformed, but man-page rendering does seem like a = > fairly simple task. > > Erik= There's more use of groff than just being a man page builder. I personaly use it for lots of things, eg (multi lingual (human language) front end input & multiple back end output to .ps .asc & .html, & I developed patches to allow wysiwyg so you can vi in an xterm & each time you type :w , a remake occurs, & gv/ghostview redisplays the .ps (without clicking redisplay). http://berklix.com/~jhs/src/bsd/fixes/FreeBSD/wysiwyg.shar.asc Doubtless some other groff users too, whether or not on FreeBSD mail lists. There's been a roff in Unix since V6 ie 1978 or so. Principle of least surprise tilts us to try to avoid discarding it from src/ to ports/, as it would make our Unix less easy to use than others (& we BSDs are supposed to be true Unix inheritance :-) Even BSD needs groff: If some people might rewrite all FreeBSD manuals in some other format, that would still leave other BSD uses of groff eg: new imports to src/ of bits from other BSD eg Net/Open/Dragon whatever, ditto if we import sources from other Unix eg Linux, Solaris, HP-UX etc, & just think of the vast swathe of 3rd party PD software in ports, chunks written by long time Unix people, who of course have written manuals for tools in roff/ nroff/ troff/ groff type syntax. Tossing groff out of src/ to ports/ (as someone suggested a month or so back) would be bad. Cheers, Julian -- Julian Stacey: BSD Unix Linux C Sys Eng Consultants Munich http://berklix.com Mail plain text, Not HTML quoted-printable Base64 http://www.asciiribbon.org
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