Re: Thoughts on tbl(1)

[Alejandro Colomar]

Hi!

On 9/6/22 18:23, Ingo Schwarze wrote:
> Hi Alejandro & Branden,
>
> G. Branden Robinson wrote on Tue, Sep 06, 2022 at 07:49:58AM -0500:
> > At 2022-09-06T13:37:39+0200, Alejandro Colomar wrote:
>
> > > I was wondering if tbl(1) wouldn't be better split into tbl(1) and
> > > groff_tbl(7)
> > [...]
> > > I'd like to be able to refer to tbl(7) as a language when talking
> > > about it as a language.
>
> > That's a reasonable request.  I think Ingo already does this in mandoc.
>
> Not quite.
>
> The mandoc package does provide a tbl(7) language manual, but it does
> not provide a tbl(1) command line command, and consequently no tbl(1)
> manual page either.
>
> [...]
> > > And, I think it also makes sense to separate documentation about the
> > > command and its options from documentation about the language.
>
> The GNU tbl(1) command has no options, which is actually laudable.
> Well, there is the rather obscure -C option.  I say obscure because
> even formatting the oldest manual pages that ever used tbl(7),
> those in PWB and v7, does not need -C.
>
> I think if a command has no options except a compatibility option
> that is almost never needed even in extreme cases where one might
> expect that they might possibly require compatibility, it is fair
> to say that for practical purposes, it has no option.
>
> Doug is right that a manual for only the command line command
> would be almost empty.

Then, it might make sense to have tbl(7) with no tbl(1).  But, of 
course, every command needs a manual page, even if it's just to know 
that the command is as simple as it can be.  I think I prefer having 
both tbl(1) and tbl(7), even if tbl(1) is very short.

We have for example nologin(1) in the Linux man-pages.  It's 16 lines of 
source code, and 25 lines of formatted output.  I wish more commands had 
only that problem.

Cheers,

Alex

--
<http://www.alejandro-colomar.es/>

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