Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

[Gunnar Ritter]

Werner LEMBERG <address@hidden> wrote:

> > > I would claim it is. The groff manual pages also cannot be
> > > displayed properly by other manual page viewers. There are
> > > some glitches even with Heirloom troff; although it can handle
> > > the language, some groff-specific macros do not exist in its
> > > -man implementation.
>
> groff-specific macros?  Please explain.

The macros in www.tmac, for example, only exist in groff's -man
macros. They are not present in other implementations of -man
and are usually not understood by other man page applications
like man-to-HTML converters which often form the base for
desktop viewers etc. In effect, e.g. the text of ".URL" macros
disappears.

> > > So I think this is worth fixing regardless of the specific case of
> > > DocBook conversion. groff is by far not the only program which is
> > > used to display the groff manual pages.
>
> Well, does this mean that I should refrain from using any GNU
> extensions in man pages?

Yes, I recommend that. As you know, I like most of them and
have re-implemented them accordingly in Heirloom troff, so
this is not an argument against groff extensions in general.
But in manual pages, it is better to stick with traditional
macros and simple requests. GNU extensions are not the only
problem - even ".de" is better avoided.

        Gunnar