dwb : groff replacement proposal

[Cyrille Lefevre]

Le 30/06/2010 23:00, Julian H. Stacey a écrit :
>> Den 30/06/2010 kl. 19.07 skrev Steve Kargl:

Hi,

first of all, I'm not asking to rid out groff from FreeBSD, but I know
that *BSD aims to be FSF not aware.

I've just seen a few days ago that the "Documenters Work Bench" is 
available for download.

for the ones who don't know what is the DWB, it's the nroff/troff 
package which inspired groff... no more than this.

I then inform you about a possible replacement of groff w/ the DWB.
well, the license has to be studed, the troff driver list would be 
minimal and the mdoc macros would probably be adapted.

however, it would probably render manual pages on tty, which is the 
primary usage asked, I am wrong ?

>>> The fact remains that there is no available alternative that
>>> contains the functionality of groff.

maybe not all functionalities, but at least the one which is to render 
well on tty. I may be wrong... of course, for printing, groff will be 
more adavanced, but is this really needed for the common usage ? and if 
this feature is needed, it may be sufficient to have if from ports.

>> 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.

you're right.

> There's more use of groff than just being a man page builder.
>
> I personaly use it for lots of things, eg

this point doesn't require groff in src/ :-)

> 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 :-)

nobody's asking to get rid of *roff...

> 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.

if the mdoc macros may be adapted to the DWB, there would be no loss of 
functionality and since the usual manual pages uses the man macros, 
which is of course provided as well as the mm and ms macros ones.
it's not even impossible than the DWB render better then groff :-)
in any case, it's just a story of macros, no more than this, no need to 
rewrite anything and so.
the only problem may be the use of GNUism as if someone wanted to run as 
bash script under dash... they are wrong to go this way.

> Tossing groff out of src/ to ports/ (as someone suggested a month
> or so back) would be bad.

except if an acceptable replacement alternative exists and the DWB may 
be the one ?

Regards,

Cyrille Lefevre
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