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From: | Larry Kollar |
Subject: | Re: [Groff] Replacing groff with troff? |
Date: | Tue, 1 Jun 2010 22:04:47 -0400 |
Ralph Corderoy wrote:
Hi Charlie,All they're doing is putting mdocml in base to handle manpages.http://mdocml.bsd.lv/ DESCRIPTIONmdocml is a suite of tools compiling "-mdoc", the roff macro packageof choice for BSD manual pages, and "-man", the predominant historical package for UNIX manuals. The mission of mdocml is to deprecate groff, the GNU roff implementation, for displaying -mdoc pages whilst providing token support for -man.Why? groff amounts to over 5 MB of source code, most of which is C++ and all of which is GPL. It runs slowly, produces uncertain output, and varies in operation from system to system. mdocml strives to fixthis (respectively small, C, ISC-licensed, fast and regular). "uncertain output"?
That's just one lump in a whole basket full of bizarre. The following is really directed at the mdocml dude…
> over 5 MB of source codeUm… there are these things called "hard drives" that you really need to look into. Seriously, I compiled groff a while back on a 486-based Linux box with a 110MB (that's MB, not GB) drive, which had about 80MB available for the OS once the MS-DOG & swap partitions got their share. And that was the full-zoot groff, not some "base environment."
> most of which is C++ and all of which is GPLI understand some folks are allergic to GPL, but I fail to see what the problem is with C++. Yeah, it took a while to compile groff on that 486, but it takes a while to do *anything* on a 486.
> It runs slowlyAnd that statement pretty much casts everything else you say into question. "Runs slowly" compared to what? I haven't found any general- purpose formatter that even comes close to groff, speed-wise, and don't get me started on GUI tools. Some Unix deployments had a "catman" directory with pre-formatted (ASCII) manpages... but are there really general-use systems out there these days that are so slow, even the overhead for processing a manpage is too much to bear? Embedded systems, sure, but who's reading manpages on them?
> produces uncertain output At this point, I'm convinced that the author has never used groff. > varies in operation from system to systemReally? I have my work environment set up on MacOSX, Linux, and a Dozebox running Cygwin. Works exactly the same on each box. It's taking a little work to get it going on GnuWin32, but that's because I have to port the support scripts.
Sorry about the rant, but I can't let this disinformation pass unchallenged.
Larry
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