Re: [Groff] colorized man pages

[Steffen Nurpmeso]

"James K. Lowden" <address@hidden> wrote:
 |On Tue, 23 Aug 2016 01:29:07 +0200
 |Tadziu Hoffmann <address@hidden> wrote:
  ..
 |> Seriously:  what's wrong with escape codes?  I mean, if you're
 |> still working with a text terminal, I'd expect escape codes to
 |> be your daily bread and butter, not something to scoff at.
 |> (Unless I'm missing the good-natured, approving irony here?)
 |
 |Yes, but who is still working with a text terminal?  

Oh.  I do.

  ..
 |mother of invention -- the author of the article I linked to decided
 |he'd like color in his man pages.  Where did he turn?  A style sheet in
 ..
 |So, yes, he's still working with a text terminal, after a fashion.
 |But the programmability of that text terminal is an accident of
 |history, its feature set long since made obsolete -- not useless, but
 |out-moded -- by graphical displays and GUIs.  That he reached for that
 |particular tool is a measure of how far we have come, and how far we
 |have not.  

In fact i personally was a bit disappointed to come back to look
into Linux about 2012/3 and see that the beautiful framebuffer
hasn't proceeded.  Before i've switched to FreeBSD ~2001/2 i think
that thing came up and there was a simple, clean and documented
header in /usr/include that accessed some drawing graphics.  And
back then i for a moment was almost dreaming it would be possible,
just me and the kernel that is, because all i would have needed
beside a terminal is a PDF and a graphics viewer.  (I didn't know
about Plan9, despite the fact it is always graphical.  And of
course a compiler would never have made it.)

There was the Norton/Midnight Commander, but i really wouldn't
know of a better way, with full control and power that is, and
except for real doing-by-thinking, than a normal shell command
line.  I admit i never used David Korn's extended shell, because
for my everydays' work i have everything i need (including
a graphical browser) but that would be a direction that
i understand.

--steffen