Re: Modernising UNIX manpages.

[address@hidden]

Hello alls,

De : James K. Lowden <jklowden@schemamania.org>
> The problem is, the solution to a better tool lies not in the etheral
> domain of language design, but in the grotty domain of GUI
> programming.

I would also agree that pointing clearly the problem of unix manpages would help
find the correct solution.

- if man or mdoc syntaxes have to change, one can create a friendly and
semantic macro set with troff, which won't break the man pages environment:
    .h1 my title
    .table "col 1" "col 2" "col 3"
    .link http://example.com "some link" .

- If exporting to xml is needed, one can write a dedicated tool, or write a 
nroff macro if
parsing low level troff requests is requested.

- if navigating through man pages need to be improved, then, as james says, 
it's gui
programming we need.

- going this way, we could also consider a gui for writing troff files without 
having to read
the documentation first.

I know troff have little quirks I'd be happy were not present, but so far, in 
that discussion
I have not seen where it's at fault, except it's old and forgotten.