Re: [Groff] .if !dTS - GNU extension?

[Steffen Nurpmeso]

"James K. Lowden" <address@hidden> wrote:
 |On Fri, 29 Apr 2016 17:50:52 +0200
 |Ingo Schwarze <address@hidden> wrote:

 |Have you experimented with a single index for all man pages?  I wonder
 |how useful that would be, or how it might be subdivided.  An index that
 |spanned pages would be helpful for sets of routines covered by
 |different man pages.  (groff.7 and groff_char.7 come to mind.)  

In books as well as in info pages there are either multiple
indexes or a single index where entries are somehow tagged to
indicate an entries' type, if that is applicable, which it
definetely is for the Unix manual system with its different
sections, and the corresponding differences in the manuals
contained therein.

And especially mdoc(7) can be easily extended to provide the
necessary tagging facilities, and then it is only the tool that is
missing to generate such a global index from the per-document
indexes.  If that basic Unix system will gain more functionality
it could be hoped that all those other formats in which people
started writing their manuals in order to gain that bit more (and
they don't mind adding complicated and cryptic tags in order to do
so) will extend their converters to also use it.  And at least
automatically created mdoc(7) should be acceptable to anybody.

It's absurd that (at least) in the Linux world people started
tagging man(7) manual pages, things which you use every day, with
function-less blue hyperlinks using font escapes, whereas billions
of dollars and maybe hundreds of thousands of man hours have been
put into code that is being rudely documented.  Unfortunately i am
still stuck in the MUA i maintain, and i will need until at least
mid summer eve.  But then i will come to my roff fork, and at the
long run it will be mdoc all through and it will ship with the
mdocmx extension from the start.  Even «magic» won't help against
the basic problem of non-extended mdoc(7), and that is that you
don't have anchors: no real index without proper anchors.

--steffen