Re: graphical manuals

[James K. Lowden]

On Sat, 15 Jul 2023 16:20:14 -0400
"T. Kurt Bond" <tkurtbond@gmail.com> wrote:

> The pikchr program was inspired by pic, and is somewhat compatible,
> and can output SVG.
> 
> https://pikchr.org/home/doc/trunk/homepage.md
> https://pikchr.org/home/doc/trunk/doc/differences.md

Thanks for that.  That suggests I'd be following the grap route,
creating a pic preprocessor.  

Some details are very different.  Font control, for instance. pic
relies on troff, and pikchr has its own syntax.  

I don't know how to intercept the PS/PE macros in mandoc to invoke
pikchr.  It seems like writing my own PS/PE macros would be a start (a
first for me).  If possible, I want to avoid writing wrappers; I prefer
to work within the groff and mandoc frameworks.  That would make the
work easier for others to use, should I get that far.  

> Niklaus Wirth used railroad diagrams in the Pascal User Manual and
> Report, and I always found them very helpful [....]

That puts us in good company, doesn't it?  Algorithms + Data Structures
= Programs. 

--jkl