dwb : groff replacement proposal

[Julian H. Stacey]

> 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
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