Re: [Groff] Introduction

[Werner LEMBERG]

> > I have just been made a developer of the groff project to assist
> > with your documentation, and with the texinfo manual, (and perhaps
> > your website?).
> 
> This is great!  Excuse my ignorance, but how exactly is one made a
> developer of a specific project?

`To made someone a developer' basically means that he has asked me for
write access to the groff CVS repository, and I've granted it
trustfully.  A `contributor' sends a patch to me which I install then.
A `developer' can do this by himself (after the project leader -- me
in this case -- gives approval).

> The UTP provides good information for someone who needs to learn the
> basics of groff input and the groff man pages then provide a
> complete reference for the supported macros.  But the UTP material
> about running the tools is for troff and not groff so only
> marginally useful.

I really would like to see the UTP improved, this is, all references
to dead features/programs should be removed, and the new groff
features should be incorporated as extensions.

> However, I now need to write a few man pages and such.  It took some
> work for me to figure out the command lines to process the text (and
> ultimately I had to publish my pathetic attempts to the group for
> them to fix them).  It would be nice to provide some sample scripts,
> or perhaps the actual files that people could install in their own
> ./bin directories to just take the input file name and process the
> file.  They can always modify them if they want to, but it would
> make it easier to get started.

With other words, the groff_man(7) page and/or the corresponding
section in groff.texinfo isn't as nice as it should be, right?

> I'd also love to have a discussion with you about the relative
> merits of groff versus XML/docbook.  I confess that I have an
> emotional attachment to groff and would like to see it survive, but
> all the rational arguments I can make for groff are also answered by
> XML and XML has some other advantages.  Are other people interested
> in this or shall I take this off-line with David?

Please discuss it here.  There have been plans to make groff emit XML
too but...


    Werner