Re: [Groff] colorized man pages

[James K. Lowden]

On Tue, 23 Aug 2016 01:29:07 +0200
Tadziu Hoffmann <address@hidden> wrote:

> > Raw VT-100 escape sequences, in 2016.  Where will it all end?
> 
> Steering wheels.  On cars.  In 2016.  Where will it all end?
> 
> Seriously:  what's wrong with escape codes?  I mean, if you're
> still working with a text terminal, I'd expect escape codes to
> be your daily bread and butter, not something to scoff at.
> (Unless I'm missing the good-natured, approving irony here?)

Yes, but who is still working with a text terminal?  

In 1980, it wouldn't have been unusual, as you know, for a VT-100 to be
the user's single interface to the computer.  Any UI feature -- font
style & variations, menus, mutiple applications, etc. -- had to be
rendered on that one screen.  It's no wonder it became terrifically
complex. They developed programable fonts, 132-column displays,
alternate screens. It's a testament to human ingenuity.  

Today most of those features have been subsumed by the GUI.  Different
applications have different windows, different fonts, graphics, all
resizable. We have a potpourri of UI gadgetry barely imagined in those
days.  Yet the emulator remains as muscular and complex as ever, just
in case someone happens across an RS-232 cable and a line driver.  

Sadly, for all the advances, documentation has hardly budged, if indeed
it's advanced at all.  Even though a good deal of it is maintained in
typeset form, the output predominately is confined to the application
with the poorest text rendering capability: the VT-100 emulator.  

Because of poverty owing to neglect -- that is, necessity being the
mother of invention -- the author of the article I linked to decided
he'd like color in his man pages.  Where did he turn?  A style sheet in
the groff framework, perhaps?  Any kind of improvement to the
semantic-display connection?  No, he reached about as far down as
possible, and tweaked the control sequences emitted to the emulator.
Because he could.  Because, in a way, he *had* to, insofar as that
strange bit of arcania gave him the most leverage.  

So, yes, he's still working with a text terminal, after a fashion.
But the programmability of that text terminal is an accident of
history, its feature set long since made obsolete -- not useless, but
out-moded -- by graphical displays and GUIs.  That he reached for that
particular tool is a measure of how far we have come, and how far we
have not.  

--jkl