Re: Unsupported nroff macros on MacOS X

[Robert Elz]

    Date:        Mon, 3 Apr 2023 15:10:15 -0700
    From:        Bakul Shah <bakul@iitbombay.org>
    Message-ID:  <D2DCB9E8-EF47-40E4-BA82-96A17BB2CB9F@iitbombay.org>

  | mandoc doesn't understand tbl output for the simple test i tried.

No, in general mandoc doesn't process *roff input at all.   Its input
syntax is similar, and it implements a few *roff commands, but in general
it simply processes mdoc (or man) macros directly - as in it knows what
to do with a TH or TS macro call (and all the others - including the few
primitive *roff forms it has been taught - like \*X and .br), but cannot
possibly cope with the the actual *roff low level code that the man macros
use to implenent those, and which the *roff formatters actually process.

  | But groff's (& plan9port's) nroff deals with this fine.

They actually implement *roff - mandoc is smaller, and faster, because it
doesn't.

kre

ps: Ken, while I am here, forget about translating HTML back into anything
rational - that's akin to translating assembler code back into C.   You can
do it, generally manually, if you really have to, but it isn't something to
ever deliberately plan to need doing.