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Re: [groff] modernization, maintanership, separate packages


From: Steffen Nurpmeso
Subject: Re: [groff] modernization, maintanership, separate packages
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2018 19:25:57 +0100
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Doug McIlroy <address@hidden> wrote:
 |All these threads are tangled in my mind, so ...
 |
 |-a: I use this quite regularly for quick peeks at line and page
 |breaks without the trouble of writing a file and looking at it
 |in another window. It is certainly the option I type most--the
 |rest are buried in shell scripts.
 |
 |separate maintenance. macro languages suffer from being almost
 |write-only. It's only a slight exaggeration to say that each
 |package requires its own special expert. I would favor separate
 |maintenance, with the maintainer filing a regression test.
 |The groff maintainer need only run all the regressions and
 |check with the package maintainer on failure.

Oh yes, i wish there would be much better regression tests, such
which span the entire set of pre- and postprocessors.

I am working on my port since December (with discontinuities), and
it seems it will end up as a really large rewrite of the codebase,
for example with a different memory handling of C strings (no
longer C++ new[], but normal malloc).  I admit i live in a bit
of a fear that it will, once this big thing is out, quite some
time to find the usual bugs that happen to happen.  It would be
much, much easier if there would be a good test suite.

(I was thinking about that back in December, and i will ask for
large and complicated documents, which use different macro sets
and which require as many as possible preprocessors, once i have
something working.  I hope i will get some responses, then.
Those could then be used as templates for a sharable test suite,
with text turned to evaporated random garbage (to be repeated with
a macro etc. as necessary).)

A good compartmentalized test suite, like Ingo Schwarze is
developing for mdoc / man(?) of his mandoc, is something that is
on my list.  For the MUA i maintain it took four years to have
that started, however ...

 |It's helpful to ship a small bundle of macro packages with
 |groff, just as a small bundle of fonts is shipped. But specialties
 |(e.g. chem) would best be available for download from the groff
 |website rather thancluttering the distribution. 
 |
 |I would like to see font files as downloadable packages, too.

I would like to see TTF support, then your desire would have been
satisfied by Linux distributions and BSD already, too.

--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer,                The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter           he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter  wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)



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