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

[James K. Lowden]

On Fri, 29 Apr 2016 17:50:52 +0200
Ingo Schwarze <address@hidden> wrote:

> I was talking about the CVS HEAD version of the mandoc toolbox from
> bsd.lv, sorry that i didn't say that explicitly.

Ah, I see, OK.  

> > I'm pretty sure my man invokes mandoc as "mandoc".  Would that be a
> > problem?  
> 
> That cannot work.  If man(1) invokes an external mandoc(1) via fork
> and exec, there is no :t support.  You need a version of mandoc
> where /usr/bin/man and /usr/bin/mandoc are hard links to one and
> the same executable file.  Otherwise, man cannot know the name of
> the temporary ctags file that mandoc created, so it cannot pass it
> on to less.

If I may say so, that's an unfortunate, unnecessary limitation.
Instead of replacing /usr/bin/man, why not support a command-line
option to specify the name of a ctags file, and supply that name to
less?  NetBSD's man uses /etc/man.conf, and the existing syntax could
enable that behavior.  

I don't want to replace the man utility, or groff as manpage formatter
for everything.  (groff.7 and groff_ms.7 are two examples of files
mandoc can't render.)  Access to indexing would be a step forward,
though, and I'm not above being opportunistic.  :-)  

Have you experimented with a single index for all man pages?  I wonder
how useful that would be, or how it might be subdivided.  An index that
spanned pages would be helpful for sets of routines covered by
different man pages.  (groff.7 and groff_char.7 come to mind.)  

--jkl