Re: [Groff] name clashings

[Bernd Warken]

On Sat, Oct 27, 2001 at 01:10:00AM +0200, Werner LEMBERG wrote:
> 
> > Python also allows to overwrite anything, but has namespaces to
> > protect possible clashings.  So how about a namespace facility in
> > groff?
> 
> Do you *really* believe this is necessary for groff?  Note that we are
> talking about a text formatting engine and not about a programming
> language. I think that a macro package prefix (e.g. `man-...' or
> `doc-...') is fully sufficient.
> 
Name spaces could be added to groff very easily.  It can be done on the
macro level either as a standalone package or as some few macros doing
this automatically (I'm still thinking about this).  These facilities
could be controlled by a command line option when memory is an issue.
With this, it seems to be possible to use groff and other troff macros at
the same time.

The basis is the .als request.  It behaves like hard links in UNIX.
More details later on.

I plan to use the XML syntax for name spaces, i.e. a colon as a 
separator.

Bernd Warken