Re: [Groff] documentation on macro writing

[Larry Kollar]

Bernd Warken wrote:

> Ralph Corderoy wrote:
> > 
> > > It might be worth transcribing.  If everyone takes a chapter, and
> > > transcribes a page per night, we could have most of it done in a
> > > couple of weeks.
> > 
> > I guess given the more tricky subject matter, i.e. we'd have to write
> > all the tbl, etc., it would need someone initially coming up with the
> > macros to use when transcribing, e.g. .chapter.  The definitions could
> > be trivial initially, it's knowing what macros exist that the
> > transcribers need.
> 
> To have an ugly text version would be a good starting point.  All 
> formatting can be added later on.

That's more or less what I was thinking -- text first, macro
religious wars later. We could go ahead & code up things like
tables, equations (if any), and pictures, since the commands
don't change regardless of macro package.

As far as macros go -- reading in Chapter 4 last night, the
authors said that they used a package written by Hayden Books
(at the time, recently acquired by Sams), I'll assume that
those aren't available unless somebody knows somebody. OTOH,
looking at troff.org, several authors (hi Jon!) used modified
versions of -ms to do the work. Just a couple of data points.

I'll start working on Chapter 5 tonight, unless someone else
has already started. I'll be reading that chapter, so I can
just type while I read.

-- 
Larry Kollar   k o l l a r  at  a l l t e l . n e t
"Content creators are the engine that drives value in the
information life cycle."   -- Barry Schaeffer, on XML-Doc