"Eric S. Raymond" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > From this list it supports anything except .fam. > > Sorry, I have to ask this because you're not a native English speaker > and the above seems technically implausible: did you get the sense of > the negative in that sentence reversed? That is, if > > A = .br .nl .sp .bp .ft .fi .nf .ul .cu .tm .so .ds .as .rm > .rn .em .am .nr .rr .ig .pm .cc .c2 .ab .do > > are you saying: > > 1) Heirloom troff supports $A plus .fam > > or > > 2) Heirloom troff supports $A plus .nop .return .mso .als .shift > > ?
2) > > On the other hand, the script which I use to convert the manual > > pages for my web pages, manServer by Rolf Howarth, > > <http://www.squarebox.co.uk/users/rolf/download/manServer.shtml>, > > supports none of the groff extensions, and also does not support > > .nl, .bp, .ul, .cu, .tm, .as, .em, .am, .rr, .pm, .cc, .c2, .ab, > > and .do from the list of two-character requests. (It generally > > does its job quite good, though.) > > I didn't think so. manServer was one of the sucks-pretty-badly > translators that made me dissatisfied enough to write doclifter. With a little CSS added, it suffices to do what I want, i.e. to convert manual pages (whose source code I control) to HTML just to give people an idea about the programs before they download and install them. > The others were man2html and a project that (I think) used to > be called CMan and later changed its name to RosettaMan. To be > fair, though, manServer is probably the least bad of the three. That was also my impression when I was looking for such tools. > All three have the same flaw: too close to presentation level, almost > no attempt to recognize content patterns. I knew I could do better > than that. (My background in AI popping up.) > > > Certainly, a look at a single > > script cannot define a set of reasonable requests in manual pages. > > Agreed. Based on your experience of multiple *roff implementations, what > would you propose as a safe set? You are probably the only person here > with experience of even more weird *roff variants than I know about, Certainly not. I know the source code of DWB 2 troff quite well now, but I have never used any closed-source version of troff. > so I would put your judgment on this above mine, Real *roff is hardly the problem since it has supported the two-character requests (except .do) for more than thirty years now. The issues are with scripts that convert manual pages or build indexes for them or whatever. I would say a program that claims to read manual pages is broken enough to be irrelevant if it cannot at least handle .br .fi .nf .sp .ig .in .ti Also it must have basic tbl support. Then there are requests that do not hurt so much if they are left uninterpreted, e.g. .ps .ss .cs .bd .ft .fp .ad .na .vs .ls .ll .lg .ul .cu .hy .hw Under some circumstances, it may be appropriate to use other requests when the benefits outweigh the risk of glitches with some viewers; for example, I think it is okay when the manual page for eqn or some other math-oriented program uses .EQ/.EN and eqn markup. I have normally avoided .de/.ds/.nr since it is not difficult to do so. But scripts in current practice might well be able to handle these, I do not know exactly what their limitations are. I just think it is advisable to be cautious. Gunnar _______________________________________________ Groff mailing list Groff@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/groff
