Re: [Groff] The future redux

[Eric S. Raymond]

Ingo Schwarze <address@hidden>:
> You see, mom(7) is not the only example of a roff macro set supporting
> the transformation you describe.  There is also mdoc(7).  The
> metadata part is short (just Dd Dt Os Sh NAME Nm Nd), stylesheet
> information is not usually included but kept in a separate file
> because you usually want to apply style to more than one document
> at a time, but what matters is that, in a well-written manual, the
> main part that follows Sh DESCRIPTION contains almost no
> presentation-level markup, just as you described.

Speaking as one who has written an mdoc interpreter (in doclifter) I
have to tell you that I do not think mdoc really delivers on this
promise.

I can see the original vision you describe in the base mdoc macros.
But I also know from painful experience that (a) there are far too many
compromises with presentation level, and (b) the mdoc package as a
whole is over-complex and bloated.  Somebody got too fond of being
clever.
-- 
                <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a>