On Fri, Mar 07, 2014, Eric S. Raymond wrote: > Peter Schaffter <pe...@schaffter.ca>: > > As for groff itself, and good typography, I care about them > > passionately, for reasons it would take a book to explain. We're > > all the same, I think. Together--list subscribers and those > > involved in active development--let's show a certain semantic nut > > he's wrong about the future of the printed page. :) > > That makes a good rallying cry, but...
And a jest, of course. > ...I actually do care about good typography. I just don't find it very > relevant to the technical-documentation inadequacies I want to address. ... > There's still a place for that; it just doesn't happen to be > anywhere near man pages. At most, typography in a manpage needs to be adequate, not brilliant. List members who print off manpages aside, I wager the vast majority of manpages are still consulted at the terminal. > Here's a f'rinstance. > > I would dearly love to own a printed edition of Sir Richard Francis > Burton's translation of the Arabian Nights with its major defect - > absence of any paragraphing - fixed. > > And on *that*, by Goddess, I'd value fine typography. And acid-free > archival paper. And a leather binding. The book as craft object and > sensual experience. Mine would be Edmund Dulac's illustrated version of Fitzgerald's translations of _The Rubyiat_. -- Peter Schaffter http://www.schaffter.ca
