Re: [Groff] Status of the portability work, and plans for the future

[Gunnar Ritter]

"Eric S. Raymond" <address@hidden> wrote:

> > Huh? What world are you living on, Eric? In yours, people
> > like browser windows popping up, make no use of browser tabs,
> > and especially do not have their tabbed browser on another
> > virtual desktop than their xterm(s)? Sounds like a strange
> > mirror universe to me.
>
> That's a disappointingly weak and evasive answer.  You might at least
> have engaged the case where BROWSER={lynx,links} so your HTML display
> comes up in the same window as 'man' was typed.

I have implemented that in my man command years ago; I
did already mention it in this discussion on January 3,
14:14:59, <address@hidden>.
I also explained there why I still consider it inferior
to nroff formatting. But I could live with it.

My comment solely applies to your proposal of combining
man and browser popups, which I think is a funny idea,
at best.

> Since you didn't, and
> you have repeatedly demonstrated that you are not stupid, I guess this 
> conversation has reached a point where you are simply refusing to think. 
> I find that a shame.

The problem rather is that you are mixing two issues.

The first is to keep manual pages portable such that
they can be handled by different nroff variants, HTML
converters, and your doclifter. This is a technical
problem about which we largely seem to agree.

The second issue is the future of Unix documentation.
This is a highly speculative issue, and it turns out
that we have rather different opinions on that. But
so what? It is not really important for solving the
first issue, the technical one.

So if you want to have a constructive discussion,
simply stay with the first issue.

        Gunnar