Re: The chat bots have come for groff users

[G. Branden Robinson]

Hi John,

At 2024-02-28T10:02:16+1100, John Gardner wrote:
> > or because of that guy's rambling response enhanced by Boots of
> > Striding and Springing?

(I was referring to the eyoung* guy...but...)

> That, and the impossibility of attempting to correct a sentence like
> *"Terminals support only four font names: R, I, B, and BI"*. Like, I
> know what the user's attempting to say, but it's not so much "wrong"
> as it is "incorrectable".

Isn't that true?  The device description files that groff ships for
terminal devices all have a line like this:

fonts 4 R I B BI

And, while, yes, you could hack up your own DESC file that said
different for a terminal device, there would be the more vexing question
of extending grotty(1) to handle whatever it was that you wanted.

> Terminals don't have fonts. I mean… they *do* (IBM selectric
> typewriters, whaddup <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNUEUth7qjc>),
> but not in the sense that they're relevant to grotty(1), and… just…
> ugh…

A more fastidious response might have said "faces" or simply "styles",
though the latter risks some confusion with the DESC file keyword of
that name.

> Stack Exchange is dead. There is no future, only underwhelming AI
> gibberish and inevitable model collapse.

I won't bet against you there.

Even the _Financial Times_ is getting the memo.

https://www.ft.com/content/6fb1602d-a08b-4a8c-bac0-047b7d64aba5

Regards,
Branden

signature.asc
Description: PGP signature