Re: [groff] Macros in their own package ...

[Pierre-Jean]

Hello alls,

I am intervening a bit late, but I believe I can clarify some little
things about *roff families:

> Larry Kollar <address@hidden> wrote:
> > John Gardner <address@hidden> wrote:
> >   1. *GNU Troff <https://www.gnu.org/software/groff/>* (~1989/1990 ‒
> >   present)
> >   2. mandoc <http://mandoc.bsd.lv> *[1]* (2008 ‒ present)
> >   3. *Heirloom Doctools <https://github.com/n-t-roff/heirloom-doctools>*
> >    (? ‒ present)

Heirloom doctools began as a fork of Solaris troff. And there are
actually two repositories of the heirloom doctools:
- the original Gunnar Ritter's (now abandonned) version:
  <heirloom.sourceforge.net/doctools.html>
- Karsten Kunze's version, which fixes some bugs of Ritter's
  version: <https://github.com/n-t-roff/heirloom-doctools>. It seems
  a bit abandonned too.

> >   4. *DWB 3.3 <https://github.com/n-t-roff/DWB3.3>* (???? ‒ 1993ish)

> >   5. *Solaris 10 ditroff <https://github.com/n-t-roff/Solaris10-ditroff>*
> >    (1980s ‒ ?)

Solaris troff is where heirloom comes from. It's official repository is on
the solaris project, the github/n-t-roof being only a fork.

> >   6. *Plan9 Troff <https://github.com/n-t-roff/Plan9_troff> *(???? ‒
> >   present)
> >   7. 9front Troff <https://github.com/n-t-roff/9front_troff> (???? ‒ ????)

Then again, these two have their official sources tree on respectively
plan9 and 9front repositories, and I bet they are regularly
synchronised together. 

> >   8. Utroff <http://utroff.org> (Which I know nothing about)

The name is probably confusing, but Utroff does not share *roff, only
macros and utilities. They are made to be used with heirloom doctools,
and I advise to use their most recent version (Kunze's, on github).

> You’re missing neatroff — https://github.com/aligrudi/neatroff
> 
> I think both Neatroff and Heirloom are based on Plan9, FWIW.

As far as I know, Neatroff is not based on any other troff. It has
been written from scratch.


Kind regards,
Pierre-Jean.