Re: [Groff] Choosing a portability target

[Eric S. Raymond]

Jon Snader <address@hidden>:
>     I don't think we should go out of our way to break
> compatibility with these systems, but I also don't think we
> should take extraordinary measures to ensure that the new macros
> will be compatible with those installations that probably won't
> use them anyway.  In practical terms, this means that we should
> use two-character macro names in the new general purpose macros
> we define (like SY and OP) but not worry about changing long
> macro names in existing man pages. 

You've described what I'm actually doing, but I'm doing this way it because 
it's the least intrusive way to do the patching, rather than out of 
a carefully thought-out policy about the level of backwards compatibility
we want.

I told Gunnar in private mail this: I care enough about backward compatibility
to troff classic that *if* the project opts for it I'll do a careful and
thorough job, but I don't care enough about it to fight for that
objective if Werner says we don't care.
-- 
                <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a>