Re: missing -Tpdf (and the curious case of mandoc_roff(7))

[John Gardner]

>
> I wonder why mandoc didn't just call its roff(7) page mandoc(7), given
> that it parallels groff(7) more than anything else.
>

Strictly speaking, Groff is at fault here; the manual page dedicated to the
Roff language proper should have been named as such, whereas groff(1)
pertains to an executable.

So, mandoc's naming is correct nomenclature, IMHO.

On Sun, 30 Jul 2023 at 06:37, G. Branden Robinson <
g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Doug,
>
> At 2023-07-29T15:16:42-0400, Douglas McIlroy wrote:
> > Cygwin did exclude gropdf and pdfgroff. "The accompanying man page"
> > that I meant was groff.1. Perhaps that man page should say that not
> > all groff distributions support pdf.
>
> Okay.  I want to keep groff(1)'s comprehensive list of man pages, and
> not generate variants of it at build time depending on configuration
> options.  But a note as you suggest is going to be more reliable than
> trusting distributors to patch the man pages to reflect their own
> configurations.
>
> Off the top of my head, configuration options affect the availability
> of gropdf(1), grohtml(1), gxditview(1), and xtotroff(1).
>
> Not precisely related, but to get it on record on the groff mailing
> list, I've noticed while observing 1.23.0 uptake that some distributors
> discard groff's soelim(1) and roff(7) man pages in favor of mandoc's.
> That's a shame.  The loss of the latter is a particularly sore point
> given all the content it has.
>
> I wonder why mandoc didn't just call its roff(7) page mandoc(7), given
> that it parallels groff(7) more than anything else.
>
> Regards,
> Branden
>