[bug #59425] [man, ms, mm]: drop compatibility wrapper feature

[G. Branden Robinson]

Update of bug #59425 (project groff):

                  Status:               Need Info => Postponed              
             Assigned to:                    None => gbranden               
                 Summary: [man, ms]: man pages are not compatibility-wrapper
aware => [man, ms, mm]: drop compatibility wrapper feature

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Follow-up Comment #2:


[comment #1 comment #1:]
> Groff macro packages clearly cannot work with any other roff implementation,
and nobody in their right mind would want to use non-groff macro packages with
groff.

[raises hand]  I'd be curious to see what happened.  In principle, they should
work find in compatibility mode.

>  Alternative implementations of standard macro packages like man(7) and
ms(7) basically don't exist, at least not any that are meant to be portable
and that are relevant for practical use.

You mean alternatives to both AT&T's _and_ groff's?

Yeah, I don't know of any.
 
> If you install multiple different implementations of roff, then the way to
do that is to have a different directory tree for each of them, including a
different macro directory for each one, and make sure every implementation
uses its own macro directory.

Yes, that's what I do with Heirloom.

> Touching this before release might cause a gratuitious risk of regressions,
but i think this obsolete "compatibility-wrapper" feature should probably be
deleted after release.  I doubt that it ever made much sense in the first
place.

Agreed; I don't plan to do anything about it right now, apart from fix the man
pages, _maybe_.

> On top of that, DragonFly is the only relevant BSD that still uses groff for
formatting manual pages, and it certainly doesn't support installing
alternative man(7) and ms(7) packages.  So this is a non-issue for more than
just a single reason.

Yes, I think this can go on the list of things to retire after 1.23.0.  Maybe
we should make an official list of these, and include it in the release notes
so people have as much warning as possible.  ("If you use this stuff, speak up
now.")

Kind of on that note, glilypond has been totally broken for 5 years, near as I
can tell.  Though I'd rather it be fixed than dropped.  Embedding a chunk of
score in a document is something I am actually personally inclined to do.

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