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Re: [groff] groff as the basis for comprehensive documentation?


From: Nate Bargmann
Subject: Re: [groff] groff as the basis for comprehensive documentation?
Date: Sat, 21 Apr 2018 12:59:16 -0500
User-agent: NeoMutt/20180223

* On 2018 21 Apr 09:56 -0500, John Gardner wrote:
> We just need a post-processor that can generate reusable, *stylable* HTML
> output for an endless and unpredictable range of both site layouts and
> portable devices. Intelligently-structured markup is the first step – most
> front-end developers these days are reusing existing stylesheets written in
> a variety of CSS precompilers. The only way to accommodate this
> all-pervasive cesspool of copy+pasta is *to focus on content and semantics,
> not its presentation*.

I like the ambition on display, John.  :-)

Beyond the things you've already outlined and the thing I've mentioned,
I forgot about things like Media-Wiki markup and now the use of Markdown
for Wiki markup (that reads like we're going one way to go the other!)

I've done project documentation in each of those mentioned and had to
convert the Media-Wiki stuff to SourceForge.net's dialect of Wiki
Markdown when they dumped the use of Media-Wiki.  Then earlier this year
SF.net became wholly unreliable so I moved our stuff over to the GitHub
wiki and had to do some editing to make it right there again.

If I were emperor of the universe I would put a moratorium on document
formats!

But why do we focus on presentation when authoring a document?  I think
that in large part we have trained ourselves to do so using the various
desktop word processing/publishing programs that came down the pike.
I've done plenty of documents where the content was subservient to the
presentation (newsletters and such).  A word processor forces a
presentation first mindset because its only real output is the printed
page.  It's not a GUI thing, I was spending as much time tweaking the
presentation in the codes editor in Word Perfect 5.1 on MS-DOS in 1990
as I was writing lab reports.

Working in the presentation mindset for so long makes it difficult to
think in terms of semantic markup.  I'm not sure I really understand it
fully.  Even working with the man macros, I still spend some amount of
time checking the presentation on the terminal and with PDF and HTML
output.

- Nate

-- 

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all
possible worlds.  The pessimist fears this is true."

Web: http://www.n0nb.us  GPG key: D55A8819  GitHub: N0NB

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