Re: [Groff] ESR in manpages versus the WEB

[mhobgood]

On Dec 30, 2006, at 5:28 PM, Gunnar Ritter wrote:

> mhobgood <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> > >  It's the 21st century, all the documentation on my system ought to
> > > present as a hypertexted local Web through my browser.
> >
> > Subject two.  That is your personal preference.  Myself, I'm quite
> > happy to use other forms for documentation; forms that do not invoke
> > my browser at all.
>
> The real argument for DocBook is that such a document can
> be converted to any presentation format with relative ease,
> regardless of personal preferences. Thus if you say that
> Eric prefers a web browser but others might prefer other
> viewers, you should rather argue for doclifter, not against
> it.

I'm not against it.

> Besides, it is completely clear that Eric is not the only
> one who wants this. Desktop environments have tried to offer
> similar services since years. You have simply misunderstood
> the personalized formulation of Eric's argument.

Perhaps, perhaps not.

> > But,
> > if a manpage does elaborate, bizarre things, it is your program that
> > must cope.
>
> You are the first person I have met so far who thinks
> so. All guides to manual page writing I have read also
> disagree with you.
>
> Maybe you could just rethink your opinion?

No.  It is the job of a translator program to cope with the source.   
If a
source language needs changed to allow a translator to work, the  
translator
must be fixed.  Note, this doesn't preclude a translator working with  
only a
subset of a language.

> Ultimately, your argumentation is just a demonstration of
> your lack of knowledge about markup language concepts. You
> have asked us to "explain what XSL and FO are" a week ago;
> perhaps you might consider to familiarize yourself with the
> subject in more depth now before you continue to discuss in
> that style?
>
>         Gunnar

XSL and FO.  Ah yes, I had forgotten about them.  I'm familar with  
the W3C material,
enough to understand most of it.  As to my knowledge level of markup  
languages, it
is sufficient to allow me to write programs to accomplish tasks that  
I set forth.
Perhaps not good enough to release any general purpose tools, but  
then again, doing
that is not something I'm interested in.

As to familiarizing myself more indepth about the subject before I  
continue
to discuss in this style, no.  My knowledge is deep enough.  Seldom  
do I offer
opinions, a trait I plan on continuing.

Cordially,
Michael D. Hobgood