[Groff] ideas for TODO

[Bernd Warken]

Long-term projects are a good means to make some software into a
dynamically evolving package.  Here are some ideas for the TODO file.

########## man-page interface

- Write a reverse man program that can parse information - such as
sections or references - from a standard man-page for further
processing.  There exists a program with a rudimentary functionality,
known as RosettaMan.  It is used by tkman and the KDE browser, but
unfortunately, its license is not free.  The reverse man program should
be written from scratch, but compatibility with RosettaMan might be
essential.

- The man-page interface should be made into a full internet service,
similar to what KDE does with the URI "man:_name_(_section_)".
Interfaces for web server programs and plug-ins for browsers would be
great.  Maybe this could be coordinated with developers from KDE/GNOME
and the GNU info documentation format.

- Write a device that transfers (long) man-pages into a book-like form.

########## macro programming

- A powerful programming interface for designers of macro packages
should be created.  This should not be available for users, but should
give enhanced power for implementing macro packages in groff.  As this
is internal, compatibility is not an issue.  For example, some basic
macros (containing @) could be collected from several macro packages.
This could evolve whith revising or writing macro packages.

- The whole documentation for the X11 sources and libraries is written
in roff using macro packages provided by the X Consortium.  These could
be made available in groff.

- Write documentation "groff Macro Programming" under FDL (GNU Free
Documentation License).

########## usage

- Write documentation on how to edit groff source (emacs, vi, ...?).

- Make the existing *emacs nroff-mode into a roff-mode or groff-mode.

- Write documentations like "Formatting with groff" or "Cracks like
groff" under FDL (GNU Free Documentation License).

- It would be nice to have an overview on who and which documents use
roff for formatting.  Maybe there could be a repository file for this in
the source main or doc directory.

########## Other formats

- Implement a groff interface for TeX packages like musixtex, etc.  For
the argument handling in groff is much clearer than TeX's error-prone
argument clustering and the everything's-a-TeX-function approach.


Bernd Warken <address@hidden>