Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2007-03-12 Thread Ralph Corderoy
Hi, Back on 2006-12-31 Eric S. Raymond wrote: > Ralph Corderoy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > Will /usr/share/man still have roff man pages as well as the HTML > > conversion? > > Probably. But is likely that man will at some point start presenting > through the browser by default if you have a BROWS

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2007-01-14 Thread Keith Marshall
On Friday 05 January 2007 22:47, D. E. Evans wrote: >But xhtml-1.0+ *requires* that tags be represented in *lower* >case *only*, and any mixed or upper case representation is >(strictly) invalid. AIUI, today's web authors really should be >striving towards xhtml standards complianc

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2007-01-06 Thread Gaius Mulley
Heinz-Jürgen Oertel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Am Donnerstag, 4. Januar 2007 21:30 schrieb Gaius Mulley: > > URL: > >   http://floppsie.comp.glam.ac.uk/Papers/grohtml-journal/grohtml.pdf > > Interesting article Gaius. > Is it possible to get the groff source ? Looks like there is something to

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2007-01-05 Thread D. E. Evans
But xhtml-1.0+ *requires* that tags be represented in *lower* case *only*, and any mixed or upper case representation is (strictly) invalid. AIUI, today's web authors really should be striving towards xhtml standards compliance; in this respect, grohtml's use of lower case is alread

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2007-01-05 Thread Keith Marshall
On Friday 05 January 2007 15:25, Clarke Echols wrote: > >    > grohtml outputs elements/tags as lowercase, not uppercase as > >    > required by the HTML recommendations. > > > >    This is a contradiction.  A `recommendation' can never be `required'. > > > > I'll stick with requirement.  Otherwise

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2007-01-05 Thread Clarke Echols
D. E. Evans wrote: > grohtml outputs elements/tags as lowercase, not uppercase as > required by the HTML recommendations. This is a contradiction. A `recommendation' can never be `required'. I'll stick with requirement. Otherwise, what's the point of a standard? How about "...as

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2007-01-05 Thread D. E. Evans
Read it again -- the spec itself uses upper- and lowercase for readability, but HTML is case insensitive so , , , and are all equally valid. I am corrected. Thank you. ___ Groff mailing list Groff@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinf

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2007-01-05 Thread D. E. Evans
> grohtml outputs elements/tags as lowercase, not uppercase as > required by the HTML recommendations. This is a contradiction. A `recommendation' can never be `required'. I'll stick with requirement. Otherwise, what's the point of a standard?

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2007-01-05 Thread Larry Jones
D. E. Evans writes [quoting me]: > >No. From the HTML 4.01 spec: > > Element names are written in uppercase letters (e.g., BODY). > Attribute names are written in lowercase letters (e.g., lang, > onsubmit). Recall that in HTML, element and attribute names are > case-

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2007-01-04 Thread Werner LEMBERG
> grohtml outputs elements/tags as lowercase, not uppercase as > required by the HTML recommendations. This is a contradiction. A `recommendation' can never be `required'. Werner ___ Groff mailing list Groff@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2007-01-04 Thread D. E. Evans
D. E. Evans writes: > > Though not a big deal for the big web browsers, with error > correcting facilities (or many of the search engines that have > similar error correction), shouldn't all HTML entities be upper > case, and all attributes be case sensitive (99% are lower case)?

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2007-01-04 Thread Larry Jones
D. E. Evans writes: > > Though not a big deal for the big web browsers, with error > correcting facilities (or many of the search engines that have > similar error correction), shouldn't all HTML entities be upper > case, and all attributes be case sensitive (99% are lower case)? No. From the HT

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2007-01-04 Thread Gunnar Ritter
"Michael(tm) Smith" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > OK, I can definitely understand that. Anyway, I think if we were > to have a set of stylesheets for converting DocBook to troff, a > lot of the work done in putting those together could be > "repurposed" to create a set of stylesheets for TEI and ot

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2007-01-04 Thread Gunnar Ritter
Werner LEMBERG <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > For some uses, the generated troff code could also be edited > > directly instead of the source document. This is what I already do > > with my OpenDocument-to-troff converter - no sane person would want > > to edit OpenDocument manually in order to c

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2007-01-04 Thread D. E. Evans
> URL: > http://floppsie.comp.glam.ac.uk/Papers/grohtml-paper/grohtml.html A side note: Though not a big deal for the big web browsers, with error correcting facilities (or many of the search engines that have similar error correction), shouldn't all HTML entities be upper case, and all a

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2007-01-04 Thread Heinz-Jürgen Oertel
Am Donnerstag, 4. Januar 2007 21:30 schrieb Gaius Mulley: > URL: >   http://floppsie.comp.glam.ac.uk/Papers/grohtml-journal/grohtml.pdf Interesting article Gaius. Is it possible to get the groff source ? Looks like there is something to learn from it. Regards Heinz ___

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2007-01-04 Thread Gaius Mulley
(Ted Harding) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > URL: > http://floppsie.comp.glam.ac.uk/Papers/grohtml-paper/grohtml.html Thanks Ted, for what it is worth there is a version 2 of the paper: URL: http://floppsie.comp.glam.ac.uk/Papers/grohtml-journal/grohtml.pdf which contains a little more deta

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2007-01-04 Thread Eric S. Raymond
Ted Harding <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Intervening to publicise a relevant but possibly collateral piece. > It is certainly very relevant to the present discussion, but > probably it does not of itself take it forward. Nevertheless, for > those who do not already know it (as I did not until I happened

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2007-01-04 Thread Ted Harding
Intervening to publicise a relevant but possibly collateral piece. It is certainly very relevant to the present discussion, but probably it does not of itself take it forward. Nevertheless, for those who do not already know it (as I did not until I happened upon it by chance this morning) it is a v

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2007-01-03 Thread Michael(tm) Smith
Gunnar Ritter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, 2007-01-03 19:55 +0100: > As a troff user, my preference would actually be to have > a collection of XSLT stylesheets, one for each of the > supported XML input languages, and to have a common troff > macro set to which all of these are transformed. This is > bec

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2007-01-03 Thread Werner LEMBERG
> As a troff user, my preference would actually be to have a > collection of XSLT stylesheets, one for each of the supported XML > input languages, and to have a common troff macro set to which all > of these are transformed. This sounds good. > For doing anything which is not representable in t

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2007-01-03 Thread Gunnar Ritter
"Michael(tm) Smith" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Gunnar Ritter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, 2007-01-03 18:30 +0100: > > The other side is that it is much easier to convert DocBook > > to troff directly. > True. And people familiar with LaTex and ConTeXt find it much > easier to convert DocBook to those fo

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2007-01-03 Thread Michael(tm) Smith
Gunnar Ritter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, 2007-01-03 18:30 +0100: > The other side is that it is much easier to convert DocBook > to troff directly. True. And people familiar with LaTex and ConTeXt find it much easier to convert DocBook to those formats directly. It makes great sense if DocBook is the o

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2007-01-03 Thread Gunnar Ritter
"Michael(tm) Smith" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > "Eric S. Raymond" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, 2006-12-24 13:01 -0500: > > XSL-FO to troff would be far more appropriate. XSL and troff are at about > > the same level; thus, you wouldn't have to wire in all the policy/styling > > decisions you would in a

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2007-01-03 Thread Michael(tm) Smith
M Bianchi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, 2006-12-23 08:26 -0500: > I encourage the flat text format because sometimes things like X fail and > you > want access to the documents without requiring the fancy programs work and a > flat-file editor is all you have. > > +-+

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2007-01-03 Thread Michael(tm) Smith
"Eric S. Raymond" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, 2006-12-24 13:01 -0500: > Gunnar Ritter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > But I think the most important question for troff people is, > > where is a complete, high-quality converter for > > > >+-+/ +===+ > >| XML-Doc

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2007-01-03 Thread Michael(tm) Smith
"Eric S. Raymond" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, 2006-12-23 00:56 -0500: > Well, no, actually. DocBook -> man is easy -- you're throwing away > structure when you do that. man -> DocBook is *hard*, because you have > to deduce semantic structure from presentation-level cliches. DocBook -> man may be e

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2007-01-03 Thread Michael(tm) Smith
M Bianchi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, 2006-12-22 20:00 -0500: > The value of man pages is not the markup language. > The value is (when done right): > > structured, standardized presentation > NAME, SYNOPSIS, DESCRIPTION, OPTIONS, SEE ALSO, BUGS > > standardized nomenclature >

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2007-01-03 Thread Eric S. Raymond
Gunnar Ritter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > That said, most HTML manual pages I have seen so far look ugly > just because their visual layout is inferior to that of -man, > e.g. regarding indenting, but this is fixable. One of my to-do items is to compose a good stylesheet for HTML generated from doclift

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2007-01-03 Thread Gunnar Ritter
(Ted Harding) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 03-Jan-07 Michael(tm) Smith wrote: > > You could use a console/curses-based browser, right? lynx or > > elinks or w3m. I'd think paging through a man page with one of > > those would be much the same as you have with less(1) now. Except, > > for one th

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2007-01-03 Thread Ted Harding
On 03-Jan-07 Michael(tm) Smith wrote: > Ralph Corderoy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, 2006-12-31 12:42 +: > >> For those of us that think browsers are a poor way to read >> documentation like man pages, e.g. poor searching, no remembering >> the scroll-bar position, etc., presumably there will be a way

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2007-01-03 Thread Michael(tm) Smith
Ralph Corderoy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, 2006-12-31 12:42 +: > For those of us that think browsers are a poor way to read documentation > like man pages, e.g. poor searching, no remembering the scroll-bar > position, etc., presumably there will be a way we can keep the old > behaviour on a per-user

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2006-12-31 Thread Eric S. Raymond
Gunnar Ritter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > Probably. But is likely that man will at some point start presenting > > through the browser by default if you have a BROWSER variable defined. > > For those who do not like that, I will definitively keep > the Heirloom Toolchest "man" command to prefer nrof

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2006-12-31 Thread Gunnar Ritter
"Eric S. Raymond" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Ralph Corderoy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > Will /usr/share/man still have roff man pages as well as the HTML > > conversion? > > Probably. But is likely that man will at some point start presenting > through the browser by default if you have a BROWSER

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2006-12-31 Thread Eric S. Raymond
Ralph Corderoy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Will /usr/share/man still have roff man pages as well as the HTML > conversion? Probably. But is likely that man will at some point start presenting through the browser by default if you have a BROWSER variable defined. -- http://www.catb.org

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2006-12-31 Thread Ralph Corderoy
Hi Eric, > My vision is that all the legacy help browsers become ways to point > your browser at subtrees of the HTML on your system. /usr/share/man > and /usr/share/info would be the most important HTML subtrees, but > there could be others, including project-specific others. A bit off-topic..

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2006-12-28 Thread Eric S. Raymond
Zvezdan Petkovic <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > If -mdoc was refused for the above reason, how accepted DocBook will be? I'm not sure how much that matters. Nothing stops you from composing in asciidoc or whatever; the whole conversion from composition format to DocBook could take place out of your sight

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2006-12-28 Thread Zvezdan Petkovic
On Wed, Dec 27, 2006 at 06:52:13AM -0500, Eric S. Raymond wrote: > I don't think your citation of -mdoc is really on point. IMO, the > reason it hasn't gained acceptance is that, while -mdoc markup is > cleverly designed, it is also quite complex -- more heavyweight than > most man-page writers wa

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2006-12-27 Thread Eric S. Raymond
Werner LEMBERG <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Similar to evaluation, I would like to have some guide lines how to > use \w -- there are examples where this escape greatly improves the > layout in a generic way. Ideally, those are encapsulated in proper > man macros, but... I will investigate and report.

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2006-12-27 Thread Werner LEMBERG
> Safe escapes: > \' \- \$ \* \& \ \ > \c \d \e \f \u \n A follow-up: This is only a small fraction of the escapes! Examples for missing ones are \\, \e, or \~. Perhaps it's easier to tell us which (besides \w) are problematic. Werner

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2006-12-27 Thread Werner LEMBERG
> Safe escapes: > \' \- \$ \* \& \ \ > \c \d \e \f \u \n > > Note that \w is *not* safe. Hmm. > In general, we can't count on the viewer to be able to render > horizontal or vertical motions with precision, we can't count on it > to know font sizes, and we can't even count on it to

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2006-12-27 Thread Eric S. Raymond
Gunnar Ritter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > In general I might agree with you. However, .EX/.EE and .DS/.DE > > have a couple of interesting properties: > > > > 1. They are, by far, the most commonly invoked man macros that don't > > exist. :-) That is, significant numbers of man-page writers think t

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2006-12-27 Thread Gunnar Ritter
"Eric S. Raymond" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > In general I might agree with you. However, .EX/.EE and .DS/.DE > have a couple of interesting properties: > > 1. They are, by far, the most commonly invoked man macros that don't > exist. :-) That is, significant numbers of man-page writers think

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2006-12-27 Thread Eric S. Raymond
Gunnar Ritter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > I doubt it is useful at all. It is perfectly okay to use > statements outside the "safe" set if they do not do harm > when a viewer just discards them. I think you just widened the meaning of "safe". :-). > > On a related topic, there are a couple of man macro

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2006-12-27 Thread Gunnar Ritter
"Eric S. Raymond" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Werner LEMBERG <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > > I think it might not be a bad idea for troff to throw warnings when > > > a man page uses a troff request outside the safe set. Note that I > > > am *not* recommending this measure for troff documents other

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2006-12-26 Thread Eric S. Raymond
Werner LEMBERG <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > I think it might not be a bad idea for troff to throw warnings when > > a man page uses a troff request outside the safe set. Note that I > > am *not* recommending this measure for troff documents other than > > man pages. > > Hmm. This is doable by rede

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2006-12-26 Thread Werner LEMBERG
> Having grappled with troff markup weirdness on 13,000 pages, and > written an interpreter for a a substantial part of troff within > doclifter, one of the things I am well equipped by experience to do > is describe a "safe troff" subset that we should recommend man-page > writers adhere to. Ver

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2006-12-24 Thread Eric S. Raymond
mhobgood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > For those of us not up to speed on all the current jargon, would you > explain what XSL and FO are? http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/REC-xsl-20011015/ You can think of it as a sort of XML-world equivalent of TeX or PostScript. The idea is that XML applications needing

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2006-12-24 Thread mhobgood
On Dec 24, 2006, at 12:01 PM, Eric S. Raymond wrote: Gunnar Ritter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: But I think the most important question for troff people is, where is a complete, high-quality converter for +-+/ +===+ | XML-DocBook |===>| troff |

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2006-12-24 Thread Eric S. Raymond
Gunnar Ritter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > But I think the most important question for troff people is, > where is a complete, high-quality converter for > >+-+/ +===+ >| XML-DocBook |===>| troff | ? >+-+\ +

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2006-12-24 Thread Eric S. Raymond
Gunnar Ritter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > Well, does this mean that I should refrain from using any GNU > > extensions in man pages? > > Yes, I recommend that. As you know, I like most of them and > have re-implemented them accordingly in Heirloom troff, so > this is not an argument against groff ext

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2006-12-24 Thread Gunnar Ritter
M Bianchi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > +-+ ++ > | man pages |-+ +--->| HTML on browsers | > +-+ | / ++ > |

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2006-12-24 Thread Gunnar Ritter
Werner LEMBERG <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > I would claim it is. The groff manual pages also cannot be > > > displayed properly by other manual page viewers. There are > > > some glitches even with Heirloom troff; although it can handle > > > the language, some groff-specific macros do not exi

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2006-12-23 Thread Eric S. Raymond
Werner LEMBERG <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > > So I think this is worth fixing regardless of the specific case of > > > DocBook conversion. groff is by far not the only program which is > > > used to display the groff manual pages. > > Well, does this mean that I should refrain from using any GNU > ext

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2006-12-23 Thread Eric S. Raymond
Werner LEMBERG <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > > Looks fine to me! > > > > Good, I'll strip the others. > > Don't be so quick, please! Just because I'm stripping them doesn't mean you have to take them. -- http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond __

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2006-12-23 Thread Eric S. Raymond
Werner LEMBERG <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > I don't disagree. However, how can I assure that the final result is > typographically well formatted? While working on groff.texinfo I've > found many shortcomings -- and normally texinfo does a good job. And > I'm really not willing to sacrifice that. mak

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2006-12-23 Thread Werner LEMBERG
> > Looks fine to me! > > Good, I'll strip the others. Don't be so quick, please! Werner ___ Groff mailing list Groff@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/groff

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2006-12-23 Thread Werner LEMBERG
> > I would claim it is. The groff manual pages also cannot be > > displayed properly by other manual page viewers. There are > > some glitches even with Heirloom troff; although it can handle > > the language, some groff-specific macros do not exist in its > > -man implementation. groff-specific

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2006-12-23 Thread Werner LEMBERG
> But the world I'm trying to get us to looks something like this: > > +-+ ++ > | man pages |-+ +--->| HTML on browsers | > +-+ | / +

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2006-12-23 Thread Werner LEMBERG
> It also fails because it _insists_ on interactive navigation and > there is no way (that I am aware of) to print out a definitive > reference. It's quite easy: makeinfo --output=foo.txt --plaintext foo.texinfo I like the texinfo format due to its decent output as PDF, plain text, HTML and in

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2006-12-23 Thread Eric S. Raymond
Ted Harding <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > On 23-Dec-06 Eric S. Raymond wrote: > > [...] > > Because response on the list was supportive, I went ahead and > > stripped groff.1. It's enclosed. You may have trouble spotting > > the differences, which is sort of the idea. > > Looks fine to me! > Ted. Good

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2006-12-23 Thread Ted Harding
On 23-Dec-06 Eric S. Raymond wrote: > [...] > Because response on the list was supportive, I went ahead and > stripped groff.1. It's enclosed. You may have trouble spotting > the differences, which is sort of the idea. Looks fine to me! Ted. -

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2006-12-23 Thread Eric S. Raymond
M Bianchi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > I'm beginning to think that maybe a wiki front end that yielded > XML-DocBook of the RefEntry document type could encourage keeping > lots of documentation current. The Linux Documentation Project > might find that appealing also. Perhaps that should be a project

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2006-12-23 Thread Eric S. Raymond
Gunnar Ritter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > I would claim it is. The groff manual pages also cannot be > displayed properly by other manual page viewers. There are > some glitches even with Heirloom troff; although it can handle > the language, some groff-specific macros do not exist in its > -man impleme

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2006-12-23 Thread M Bianchi
On Sat, Dec 23, 2006 at 12:56:47AM -0500, Eric S. Raymond wrote: > M Bianchi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > On Fri, Dec 22, 2006 at 06:19:15PM -0500, Eric S. Raymond wrote: > > > : > I think you'll see from my previous reply to Ted Harding that > I agree with this. Yes, I see. > : > Well, of

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2006-12-23 Thread Gunnar Ritter
"Eric S. Raymond" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I want to drastically simplify the markup used in several pieces of > groff documentation, eliminating a lot of the hairy custom macros they > presently use. > > groffer.1 > groff_out.5 > groff_tmac.5 > groff.7.gz > groff_char.7 > groff_mdoc.7 > groff

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2006-12-22 Thread Eric S. Raymond
M Bianchi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > On Fri, Dec 22, 2006 at 06:19:15PM -0500, Eric S. Raymond wrote: > > : > > But I hear you asking "Why fix what ain't broken?". > > : > > The philosophical issue this raises about groff's place in the world > > is simple: are we willing to accept that it's

Re: [Groff] Simplifying groff documentation

2006-12-22 Thread M Bianchi
On Fri, Dec 22, 2006 at 06:19:15PM -0500, Eric S. Raymond wrote: > : > But I hear you asking "Why fix what ain't broken?". > : > The philosophical issue this raises about groff's place in the world > is simple: are we willing to accept that it's a legacy rather than > a primary format