Re: [Groff] Lack of professionalism ....

[Peter Schaffter]

On Sat, Mar 07, 2015, Doug McIlroy wrote:
> I was surprised to learn that distributed macro packages
> aren't the "real thing", but only shadows left by a complex
> build process. The given reason was unpersuasive, so I ran an
> experiment.
> 
> I made a copy of s.tmac with 10 spaces after each initial dot.
> Then I ran groff on a 25,000-line source file which includes
> 8,000 request lines, essentially all -ms macros. User 
> times with and without extra space were indistinguishable
> to three significant digits: any difference was swamped out 
> by timing noise.
> 
> So it looks to me as if the policy of distributing mildly
> compressed macro packages has only two perceptible effects:
> it complicates maintenance and it complicates understanding.
> I am thus led to believe that this is yet another instance
> of ungainly galloping gnus departing from Unix's original
> path of simplicity and transparency.

Well said.  Truth is, I've never been happy with om.tmac being
stripped of comments and indenting.  It's dashed annoying for users,
who have to replace their installed om.tmac with om.tmac-u in order to
apply patches for special, site-specific features I send them.  The
alternative--me adding the features to an unstripped om.tmac, then
stripping it before preparing the patch--is also a PITA.

Plus, there's a reason for the comments and indenting.  It's called
"clarity".

My two cents worth.

-- 
Peter Schaffter
http://www.schaffter.ca