Re: [Groff] Back to the future

[Anthony J. Bentley]

On Thu, Mar 6, 2014 at 10:58 AM, Mike Bianchi <address@hidden> wrote:
> I don't see why we are stuck.  If there were macros that supported a semantic
> representation of the common man page structures they could be added to -man.
>
> I imagine:
>         .SYNOPSIS
>         .Command        man
>         .FlagArgOpt     C file
>         .FlagArgOpt     d
>         .FlagArgOpt     D
>         .LongArgOptOpt  warnings  warnings
>                 . . .
>         .Option         section
>         .Args           page
>
>         .Command     man
>         .FlagArg     -k
>         .Option      "apropos options"
>         .Args        regexp
>                 :
>
>         .DESCRIPTION
>         .Command man
>         is the system's manual pager.
>         Each
>         .Arg page
>         argument given to
>         .Command man
>         is normally

Maybe, but isn't this just reinventing -mdoc?

Your example above would be written like this:

.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm man
.Op Fl C Ar file
.Op Fl d
.Op Fl D
.Op Fl Fl warnings Ns Op =warnings
    ...
.Op section
.Ar page ...
.Nm man
.Fl k
.Op apropos options
.Ar regexp ...
.Sh DESCRIPTION
.Nm
is the system's manual pager.
Each
.Ar page
argument given to
.Nm
is normally

Funny, that looks almost exactly like what you posted. Since -mdoc
already exists, is shipped in man(1) with a great many systems
(certainly all the ones I've ever used), and already has thousands of
manpages written in it, why extend -man in a backwards incompatible
manner? Any system which doesn't support -mdoc would certainly not
support these new -man macros.

-- 
Anthony J. Bentley