Re: [Groff] Why is it...

[Colin Watson]

On Sat, Dec 15, 2007 at 09:14:38AM +1100, Robert Thorsby wrote:
> Add to this, *roff does not conform to The Debian Way (which includes 
> derivatives, such as *buntu). This means that *roff is deprecated, and 
> therefore obsolete.

For the record, I have no idea where this comes from, and it definitely
doesn't correspond to either Debian policy or Ubuntu policy. (I am the
Debian groff maintainer as well as the manager of the Ubuntu platform
team.) Most times I see the term "The Debian Way" used, it's by a Debian
user rather than a Debian developer, and often doesn't match up with
what I'd consider to be the state of the art even if it's a good idea at
all! And of course folks using Debian aren't obliged to conform to the
current state of the art either.

It sounds like either you're making some sarcastic point that I've
missed, or your gripe is based on a bad experience with individual
maintainers. To put that into perspective, here's an excerpt from Debian
policy:

  You should install manual pages in nroff source form, in appropriate
  places under /usr/share/man. You should only use sections 1 to 9 (see
  the FHS for more details). You must not install a pre-formatted "cat
  page".

  Each program, utility, and function should have an associated manual
  page included in the same package. It is suggested that all
  configuration files also have a manual page included as well. Manual
  pages for protocols and other auxiliary things are optional.

  If no manual page is available, this is considered as a bug and should
  be reported to the Debian Bug Tracking System (the maintainer of the
  package is allowed to write this bug report themselves, if they so
  desire). Do not close the bug report until a proper man page is
  available.

  You may forward a complaint about a missing man page to the upstream
  authors, and mark the bug as forwarded in the Debian bug tracking
  system. Even though the GNU Project do not in general consider the
  lack of a man page to be a bug, we do; if they tell you that they
  don't consider it a bug you should leave the bug in our bug tracking
  system open anyway.

That's about as far from "deprecated, and therefore obsolete" as you can
get.

> Note, often *buntu does not include man pages for many applications,
> even when the man pages are particularly well documented, thus
> **proving** that *roff is obsolete.

If manual pages are available and not distributed, that's a bug and
should be filed as such. If they don't exist, that's still a bug, though
not necessarily an urgent one. Feel free to refer incorrect rejections
of such bugs to me (at the other hat, address@hidden), and I will
happily take them up with the rejectors.

Cheers,

-- 
Colin Watson                                       address@hidden