Re: [Groff] Status of the portability work, and plans for the future

[Eric S. Raymond]

Jon Snader <address@hidden>:
> I stand corrected on your desktop set up, but I'm willing to
> concede only half the point.  With your desktop, calling up a man
> page from your editor would cause a browser to pop up.  That's a
> little distracting, perhaps, but not nearly so much as having to
> switch desktops.

True.  But I'm not understanding why you think that's such a crucial
point.  It's not as though it's difficult to write an invocation that
says "pull up a browser *here*, I mean *here*, even if I already have
one running on another desktop".
 
> I was a sloppy here.  What I meant is a single *virtual desktop*,
> not a single application window.

Yes, but even with that correction I wouldn't make that argument.  I
don't mistake my preferences for laws of nature. If I did, several
things related to this project would have been designed quite a bit
more prescriptively :-).
 
>                             For me, and I think many others,
> getting a man page in an editor window does make sense and I
> wouldn't want to lose that ability. 

I agreed with you about this last time.  I still don't see how it's 
relevant to the question of man's default behavior.  I readily concede
that I like M-x man in some circumstances -- but what in the heck does
that have to do with what happens when I type 'man foo' in an xterm?

To put it more directly: suppose man went to using a browser as
a default when you call it from an xterm.  You seem to believe
that implies M-x man going away.  Why do you believe that?

One of us is missing something basic here.
-- 
                <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a>