Re: [Groff] address@hidden: Re: Back to the future]

[Peter Schaffter]

On Fri, Mar 07, 2014, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
> Peter Schaffter <address@hidden>:
> > As for groff itself, and good typography, I care about them
> > passionately, for reasons it would take a book to explain.  We're
> > all the same, I think.  Together--list subscribers and those
> > involved in active development--let's show a certain semantic nut
> > he's wrong about the future of the printed page. :)
> 
> That makes a good rallying cry, but...

And a jest, of course.
 
> ...I actually do care about good typography. I just don't find it very
> relevant to the technical-documentation inadequacies I want to address.
...
> There's still a place for that; it just doesn't happen to be 
> anywhere near man pages.

At most, typography in a manpage needs to be adequate, not
brilliant.  List members who print off manpages aside, I wager the
vast majority of manpages are still consulted at the terminal.
 
> Here's a f'rinstance.
> 
> I would dearly love to own a printed edition of Sir Richard Francis 
> Burton's translation of the Arabian Nights with its major defect - 
> absence of any paragraphing - fixed.
> 
> And on *that*, by Goddess, I'd value fine typography.  And acid-free
> archival paper.  And a leather binding. The book as craft object and
> sensual experience.

Mine would be Edmund Dulac's illustrated version of Fitzgerald's
translations of _The Rubyiat_.

-- 
Peter Schaffter
http://www.schaffter.ca