Re: [Groff] groff as a backend

[Meg McRoberts]

--- Peter Schaffter <address@hidden> wrote:

> On Wed, Dec 15, 2004, Larry McVoy wrote:
> > I think one thing that is missing is a WYSIWIG system which spits out 
> > roff on the back end.  
> 
> I'm no fan of WYSIWYG except for really complex page layout, but
> I can certainly see the usefulness of this for people migrating to
> *nix-like OSes from Windows and Mac.

I suspect that none of us are huge fans of WYSIWYG or we would have
given up on *roff a long time ago!  ;-)  But it would be nice to give
people the option -- XML/DocBook and HTML both work nicely through a
straight text editor but there are also WYSYWYG front-ends available.
And people can share a document when some people work in WYSYWYG and
some work with a straight text editor.  I think that is the ideal.

I think there are some other "tools" we could provide that would make
the *roff tools more viable.  I have written docs in *roff for years
but we always had tools people who handled a lot of the backend stuff.
I admit that it took me some effort just to figure out command lines to
build the docs I wrote with groff -- could we perhaps bundle some sample
scripts that people could use to get started that do some basic formatting?

A few basic document "templates" might be nice, too -- something that has
some formatting set for the section headers, page headers and footers, and
a few other things like that.  A sample and/or a little getting started
guide might be useful, too; there are a few basic formatting things that
are used over and over (paragraphs, bold/italic/courier, lists, basic
tables) that aren't that hard if you have a sample to follow but are a
little daunting if all this is new.

I agree with everything else that's been said here, too.

Here's the tough question for everyone: what are the advantages of preserving/
enhancing groff over XML/DocBook, which does have docs stored in text format
and editable through vi/emacs but also has WYSYWYG editors available?  The
structured nature of XML/DocBook can be a bit annoying (you have to mark the
beginning and end of a paragraph or section, for example, rather than just
the start).

I love groff and would love to see it become a dominant technology again,
but I'm wondering if one can make an objective, logical argument for it
over XML.  In other words, if someone had docs in Word or FrameMaker and
was wanting to move to a different format, what does groff have to offer
that XML/Docbook does not?  

meg