[Groff] Re: Groff general issues

[Werner LEMBERG]

   > The next step will be then improving -- a rudimentary groff
   > texinfo file does already exist.

   Would not a man page or two be more appropriate? This is the engine
   for the man macros, after all.

Well, it was the choice of the author (Trent A. Fisher
address@hidden) -- have you ever seen the man pages for perl?  It's
a horror IMHO!  The whole information is split into more than 30 man
pages!  A beginner is completely lost.  Because classical man pages
have no links they are not suited to document a larger amount of data.
I say `classical' because I've read an announcement of a manpage
reader (I think on comp.linux.announce) which supports some sort of
links.

   I must admit I never really have appreciated texinfo, I tend to
   prefer reading it in source form. One reason why I'm sticking to
   groff, I guess ;-).

The last few versions of texinfo have made it far more user friendly,
e.g. providing better keyboard support.  Currently, the only real
alternative would be to write the docs in SGML format which can be
converted to many different formats (this may be even in the sense of
James Clark who has written an excellent SGML parser:-), but I've
neither experience nor the right environment for working with SGML.
Volunteers are always welcome, of course.


    Werner