*BSD News Article 12744


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Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.development
Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!haven.umd.edu!uunet!emba-news.uvm.edu!sadye.emba.uvm.edu!wollman
From: wollman@sadye.emba.uvm.edu (Garrett Wollman)
Subject: Re: Some Sample Projects for 386BSD
Message-ID: <1993Mar12.223447.21294@uvm.edu>
Sender: news@uvm.edu
Organization: University of Vermont, EMBA Computer Facility
References: <9303090526.AA07265@fubar.cs.montana.edu> <1nqplq$m11@sax.sax.de>
Date: Fri, 12 Mar 1993 22:34:47 GMT
Lines: 25

In article <1nqplq$m11@sax.sax.de> joerg@sax.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch) writes:
>Sorry, i just don't understand why we should walk back??? Only for
>the gain of some speed? IMHO, mandoc isn't a bad thing, if someone
>feels it's good, he should be even able to convert it into TeX or...
>whatever he/she likes. So why give it up?

Yes, I agree *very* strongly.  -mandoc may be slow, but it has one
ENORMOUS advantage: -mandoc macros tag document /structure/; -man
macros tag individual bits of /formatting/.

Manual pages should not know anything about their formatting.  Indeed,
I've been contemplating writing a manual page to HTML converter, which is
something that can be done *reliably* for -mandoc, but can't for -man.
(The existing converters I've seen all turn the *output* of nroff into
HTML <PRE> entities, which is not what I want.)

So, PLEASE, keep -mandoc!

-GAWollman

-- 
Garrett A. Wollman   | Shashish is simple, it's discreet, it's brief. ... 
wollman@emba.uvm.edu | Shashish is the bonding of hearts in spite of distance.
uvm-gen!wollman      | It is a bond more powerful than absence.  We like people
UVM disagrees.       | who like Shashish.  - Claude McKenzie + Florent Vollant