Re: [Groff] .if !dTS - GNU extension?

[Ingo Schwarze]

Hi Werner,

Werner LEMBERG wrote on Thu, Apr 28, 2016 at 02:05:05PM +0200:
> Ingo Schwarze wrote:
>> Werner LEMBERG wrote:

>>> However, `info' is the official GNU documentation format, and its
>>> indexing system is quite good, something groff's output formats
>>> don't provide.

>> Actually, mdoc(7) indexing is more powerful than info(1) indexing:
>> 
>>   http://man.openbsd.org/?query=Ft,Fa~[ug]id_t&apropos=1
>> 
>> Documentation:
>> 
>>   http://man.openbsd.org/apropos

> I rather meant indexing *within* a single document.  By their very
> nature, man pages don't need that because everything is on a single
> page.

The same argument applies.  Take a large manual, for example ksh(1).
With the mandoc-based implementation of man(1), type

  $ man ksh

Then inside less(1), type

  :t read

to jump straight to the description of the "read" builtin command,
while

  /read

is almost useless for the same purpose.

That is a virtue of mdoc(7) which, AFAIK, info(1) cannot keep up
with.

So while i agree that indexing is irrelevant for cat(1) and
true(1) and the like, it is useful and works with mdoc(7) in
large manuals.

Yours,
  Ingo