Peter Schaffter <pe...@schaffter.ca>:
> Manpages
>
> - improve the semantic usefulness of manpage markup; groff currently
> formats manpages for TTYs and PostScript from largely
> presentational markup, however increased use of browsers
> necessitates parsing source files for semantic markup in order to
> simplify their conversion to presentationally-indifferent xml
I think we can be a little more specific here:
- Increased use of browsers shifts the commonest use cases for man pages
in a direction that rewards structural rather than presentational markup.
The future direction for the man macros is to (a) decouple them as much
as possible from low-level troff requests and (b) semantically enrich the
markup, while (c) maintaining backwards compatibility of the macro set.
I think that lays out a good direction (parallel to where mdoc(7) has
gone, but simpler) without committing us to anything grandiose that we
can't deliver on.
> The build system
>
> - streamline the build system to improve flexibility and portability
Nothing you can ever do with autotools will ever be describable as
'streamlining'. It's a horrible, bloated, crufty mess that leads to
horrible, bloated, crufty builds.
If I were running the project I would toss out autotools in a heartbeat
and replace it with something cleaner and more modern. My top choice
would be scons.
--
<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a>
