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

[D. E. Evans]

   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.

I agree.  Ironically, what we have is currently in texinfo.  :-)

P.S. I know that Eric is shooting for something more dynamic, but
does this have to be made anymore complicated than a better export
facility for groff (improvements or replace for grohtml that is
both standardized for HTML, and perhaps has an XSLT function for a
simplified XHTML or XML doc)?  It seems that if DocBook wants to do
something with man pages, why don't they provide an import function?

Of course, to quote Santayana out of context, I'm overlooking
half the facts and half the difficulties to find some key to the
whole, but I'm finding this discussion uncomfortably arbitrary.
There's enough problems in the symantic web world that a dynamic
system along Eric's thinking seems premature or superfluous,
or perhaps visionary in scope if adopted, but as Zvezdan pointed
out, to Ada or to Java?  Why either?  If groff adopts something,
shouldn't it be to the interest of roff documentation and function?
Classic roff is print documentation, and online manuals.  It was
originally pushed to give UNIX a reason to exist.  TeX and texinfo
replaced it for GNU, because dit/t/nroff was not free, but is now
with groff (and now Caldera's release of old BSD code that has the
original sources).  roff is a system that has never been replaced,
and that most of us still find to be the most efficient thing
out there.  Do we need more than export facilities?  Is there a new
function for groff that is being pursued?  If online documentation
is what is intended, I'd rather write those directly in HTML, or
XHTML, or some other XML schema, and avoid roff, or if originally
written in roff, converted to HTML for online reference.

Am I completely missing the point, and being ignorant?