Re: [Groff] Re: groff and solaris

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

On Saturday,  5 April 2003 at 10:33:28 +0200, Werner LEMBERG wrote:
> [Sorry for answering so late.]
>
>> Some of the groff manual pages are broken.  It is not possible to
>> view the groff.1 manual page with the standard an macros of solaris!
>
> Yes.  This is quite a dilemma and I don't know how I shall handle
> this.  groff provides a lot of nice features which aren't available
> with old troff versions (e.g. colours), and the man pages which come
> with groff use them.
>
> Since groff is intended as a replacement for troff, it can do the
> opposite, namely processing and displaying documents written for old
> troff versions (using switch -C to enter compatibility mode).
>
> So the question is: Why shall someone read the groff man pages
> without groff?

I have a system with man pages for about six different versions of
UNIX.  I use groff, but the macros differ from one system to the
other, so I have difficulties reading them anyway.  Five years ago we
didn't have this problem.  I can't see reasons for gratuitous
differences; as Jörgen observes, man pages should be a lowest common
denominator.

In addition, consider the Solaris user who considers using groff.
There's a good chance that the first thing he does will to be to
unpack the tarball and try to read the man pages.  When it fails,
there's a good chance that he will assume that groff is incompatible
and forget the whole affair.

Greg
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