Re: [Groff] colorized man pages

[James K. Lowden]

On Thu, 25 Aug 2016 00:40:15 +0200
Tadziu Hoffmann <address@hidden> wrote:

> > So, yes, he's still working with a text terminal, after
> > a fashion.  But the programmability of that text terminal
> > is an accident of history, its feature set long since made
> > obsolete -- not useless, but out-moded -- by graphical
> > displays and GUIs.  That he reached for that particular
> > tool is a measure of how far we have come, and how far
> > we have not.
> 
> Well said!

(Thank you.  I for one have found the discussion interesting.) 

> (Although I have to disagree about the word "obsolete",
> which implies that better alternatives exist *and are
> available for use*.  In this case, they were not.
> Should they have been?  Because there's an urgent need
> for them, or just because it's technically possible?
> Does such a need actually exist?  Do other issues
> have a higher priority?)

To be clear, I am not arguing

        * that the GUI is better than the CLI, or vice versa
        * that xterm is obsolete

I do think it's a shame that development of the command-line experience
ceased 3 decades ago, and that what we use today is hardly better
(within the 4 corners of the terminal) than what was commonplace in
1986.  About the only improvement I can point to is UTF-8.  

You make a good point: while some things could perhaps be better
done in another way, if that other way isn't as convenient (for
whatever reason) as a terminal window is, then the terminal is hardly
obsolete.  

I think you would agree that many parts of the xterm feature set are
obsolete, and some others vestigial.  Printing, for example, is
practically unused, as are alternate screens, emulated boldface,
132-column mode, double-width characters, and Tektronix mode. Doubtless
there are still applications (perhaps a dozen) that rely on one of
bracketed paste mode, privacy mode, or rectangular copy.  These
features add greatly to xterm's complexity, and yet are of little use
to the present-day user.  

At the same time, xterm's adherence to serial-terminal standards
limits its functionality considerably, and needlessly.  The most
obvious limitation is the character-cell model, limiting the display to
monospace fonts.  The display can be switched to Tektronix mode --
which really *is* obsolete -- but no "graphics mode" to draw charts or
render proportional fonts.  Consequently, we're using nroff -- the
product of 300 bps serial lines -- instead of troff to render our man
pages.  

Whenever I mention that, it usually elicits a reminder that there are
PDF and HTML viewers, and "text is what the terminal is for!"  But
the terminal isn't *for* text; it's *of* text.  The terminal supports
the command-line environment.  There's no rule that says command-line
environments need be limited to monospaced fonts in an NxM
character-cell grid.  That just happens to be where their evolution
ceased 30 years ago.  

--jkl