Re: [groff] groff as the basis for comprehensive documentation?

[Ingo Schwarze]

Hi Ralph,

Ralph Corderoy wrote on Mon, Apr 16, 2018 at 12:43:19PM +0100:
> Ingo Schwarze wrote:

>> Debian, Ubuntu, Arch, Gentoo, Slackware, Homebrew, MacPorts, and
>> pkgsrc provide packages that you can install.

> Arch Linux's user repository, AUR, has
> https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/mandoc/ but it seems the maintainer
> has decided to have it conflict with groff:

That is bad.  Thanks for noticing!

There is more than one reason why i use both all the time:
mandoc cannot do real typesetting; even for manual pages,
i often do routine output comparisons; some manual pages -
about 0.25% in the wild - still don't work with mandoc and
require groff; ...

> `...this package now
> outright conflicts with groff.  mandoc provides the functionality of
> both groff and man-db combined; as such, I consider it a full
> replacement'.

Uh oh.  They got that wrong.  :/

> I've added a comment pointing out that groff might remain
> useful.  :-)

Thanks, absolutely!

>>     https://www.bsdcan.org/2018/schedule/events/958.en.html
 
> That says
> 
>      Both Debian and Arch Linux now also use the mandoc formatter for
>      their official online manuals.
> 
> but I had trouble finding Arch's.
> https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Man_page#Online_man_pages points to
> https://manned.org/
> 
> I guess you're referring to https://jlk.fjfi.cvut.cz/arch/manpages/about
> that they use for wiki links, e.g.
> https://jlk.fjfi.cvut.cz/arch/manpages/man/utf-8.7

Yes, that's what i'm linking to from below "Documentation and help /
online manual page portals" on http://mandoc.bsd.lv/ .

> Odd that they don't explicitly reference it AFAICS.

I have no idea what's going on there.  :-)

Yours,
  Ingo