GSoC: BSD text tools

[Charlie Kester]

On Mon 24 May 2010 at 12:17:01 PDT Joerg Sonnenberger wrote:
>On Mon, May 24, 2010 at 12:13:07PM -0700, Charlie Kester wrote:
>> I welcome this change, but groff is used for much more than manpages.
>> What happens to pic, tbl, and the other troff-related "little
>> languages"?  How can you say mdocml is "completely replacing" groff if
>> it doesn't support those kinds of things?
>
>tbl(1) is going to be supported fully at some point in the future.
>It is work-in-progress. I am not sure if pic(1) is actually used beyond
>the groff documentation, at least I don't remember anything in NetBSD
>where I checked. Similiar usage is found for eqn(1).
>
>> Is the thinking that groff has only been in base to support manpages?
>> If so, this project makes sense.  But even so, some clarification of the
>> intent is needed.
>
>The use of (g)roff for anything but man pages is practically
>non-existent.  If you want to use it for typesetting, you can always
>install it.

Yes, I understand that troff-style typesetting has mostly been abandoned
in favor of WYSIWYG editing.  And I don't have a problem with groff
moving over to ports, for those who still want or need it.

I just think announcements related to this project should try to avoid
creating the misimpression that it's intended to replace ALL of groff's
functionality.   

Saying it "completely replaces" groff is misleading when what was really
meant is that it replaces groff *for our purposes*.