Re: <OK> [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

[Gunnar Ritter]

"Michael(tm) Smith" <address@hidden> wrote:

> "Eric S. Raymond" <address@hidden>, 2006-12-24 13:01 -0500:
> > XSL-FO to troff would be far more appropriate.  XSL and troff are at about
> > the same level; thus, you wouldn't have to wire in all the policy/styling
> > decisions you would in a DocBook->troff renderer.
>
> Exactly. There are lots of XML vocabularies other than DocBook --

The other side is that it is much easier to convert DocBook
to troff directly. It is mainly a question of effort to
implement the various elements and attributes, and can
principally be done with not much more than XSLT and an
appropriate troff macro set.

Converting XSL-FO to troff, in constrast, would either
require extensions to troff itself, or at least a very
sophisticated preprocessor.

Also, as a troff user, I _like_ to specify the visual
layout decisions in troff, regardless of whether this
is the most elegant approach in an XML-centric view.

        Gunnar