Re: [Groff] The case against the case against .EX/.EE & .DS/.DE

[Larry Kollar]

> We definitely need a good guide for writing man pages, based on our
> discussion -- something like a man-to-html.howto.  This guide should
> contain (as an appendix) those macro definitions which a man writer
> can then simply copy and paste.

That was one of the thrusts of my "Writing Effective Manpages" paper that 
generated much discussion here a while back. When you're writing a 
document (like a manpage) that can be displayed in a large number of ways 
-- text on a console, PDF/print (allowing the user to choose the point size 
with the -S option, remember), or HTML... or DocBook via doclifter, for that 
matter -- you have to think *guidance* rather than *control* and trust your 
tools. Fortunately, groff has earned that trust far better than most GUI tools.

I'll revisit the paper in the light of this discussion & release an update.

<http://home.alltel.net/kollar/groff/effman.tar.gz> contains source and 
makefiles.

-- Larry