Replace groff in core?

ilembitov · 2009-10-22 18:51:28

Basically, I believe, that most people don't use groff for anything else but writing man pages. Particularly because I used to try learning troff for word processing - and couldn't do that, because the documentation is all messed up, many vital questions (such as using Cyrillic fonts, etc) are not covered and so on. So that's why I wanted to propose something:
here is a new Troff implementation written by BSD people (although it is claimed to run on Linux, too): http://mdocml.bsd.lv/
Basically, the author has written everything from scratch with only one goal - to have the full compatibility with troff man macro, everything else (mm, me, ms, mom) is not supposed to be added. The result is basically a smaller, more lightweight app with all the functions needed. So, what do you think, guys?
Besides, I believe, groff should be actually hard to mantain - this is why the Debian people (and Ubuntu consequently) haven't updated it between 1.16 and 1.20. So I think that switching to something simplier could be a major relief.

sand_man · 2009-10-22 21:34:11

I don't know anything about it but this sort of discussion normally goes on the bug tracker as a feature request.

tomk · 2009-10-22 21:52:34

Agreed - post a feature request. If you wish, you could also package mdocml and submit it to the AUR, so that people could test it and add comments to your feature request.

ilembitov · 2009-10-22 21:56:58

Oh, ok. Sorry - just remembered that somebody used to discuss transition to .xz and stuff like this here, so I thought this could be appropriate.

tomk · 2009-10-23 23:00:05

If you just want to discuss it, sure, use the bbs. However, you're talking about a possible change to Arch's core repo, something that can only happen if the devs agree, and the devs don't always come here. They DO always read feature requests.

theapodan · 2009-10-25 06:15:18

I used groff with the ms macros in college to typeset papers and such.

I would be opposed to getting rid of groff; maybe this software you recommended could be maintained in parallel with groff and used solely for man pages?

tomk · 2009-10-25 07:52:18

theapodan - add your comment to ilembitov's feature request.

ilembitov · 2009-10-25 10:23:51

theapodan wrote:

I used groff with the ms macros in college to typeset papers and such.
I would be opposed to getting rid of groff; maybe this software you recommended could be maintained in parallel with groff and used solely for man pages?

I have a more detailed description filed at the bugtracker. I surely don't suggest getting rid of groff completely, it's just that it shouldn't be in core.

Arch Linux

#1 2009-10-22 18:51:28

Replace groff in core?

#2 2009-10-22 21:34:11

Re: Replace groff in core?

#3 2009-10-22 21:52:34

Re: Replace groff in core?

#4 2009-10-22 21:56:58

Re: Replace groff in core?

#5 2009-10-23 23:00:05

Re: Replace groff in core?

#6 2009-10-25 06:15:18

Re: Replace groff in core?

#7 2009-10-25 07:52:18

Re: Replace groff in core?

#8 2009-10-25 10:23:51

Re: Replace groff in core?

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