Re: [Groff] Re: Simplifying groff documentation

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Gunnar,

> To avoid misunderstandings, I repeat that the situation is completely
> different for other troff-related aspects. We certainly do not need to
> care whether arbitrary documents compile with AIX troff. But nroff
> -man is a special case.

I think that's a good point as someone who has tried to write a portable
man page in the past.  At the time perl(1) was a single, highly
readable, man page.  Good enough to learn Perl from.  And the man page
source stuck to portable -man macros and had definitions at the top for
extras it felt were useful but non-standard.

It seems modern-day perl(1) still does that to an extent, e.g. .Vb and
.Ve for verbatim text and lots of strings for accents, etc.  Perhaps
groff's guide to writing a man page should stick to `standard' macros in
-man and provide a suitably licensed header for non-standard ones the
author can embed in their man page.  Ends up with multiple copies of
course but my man/man1 directory already has 357 definitions of .Vb, not
necessarily all the same.  Probably Perl's POD has caused this.

Cheers,


Ralph.