Re: [Groff] Mission statement, second draft

[Eric S. Raymond]

Ted Harding <address@hidden>:
> QUESTION: It has not become clear to me, from this discussion,
> to what extent this might interfere with core groff. At times,
> Eric Raymond has written as though this would involve a complete
> re-make of groff, with the potential inplication that use of groff
> for other purposes, and especially documents with "printed-page"
> layout, would involve a complete revision of how one would work
> with groff (e.g. classical macro sets would themselves become
> obsolete); and indeed has hinted that the printed page itself is
> becoming obsolete so that there will soon be no need for the
> traditional capabilities of {g|t}roff.

This is ... weirdly backwards.  I think you should go back and
reread what I wrote.  Carefully.  You apparently didn't understand it.

> SO: Supposing that this proposed enterprise goes ahead, WILL WE
> STILL BE ABLE TO USE GROFF AS WE ALWAYS HAVE DONE?

Yes.

> If there is incompatibility between a new approach to manpages, and
> non-manpage traditional use of groff, then I would say: Let the
> manpage issue be made completely separate from traditional groff.
> A completely separate program "manroff" if necessary! From my point
> of view, manpages must not interfere with core groff.

One of my goals is to decouple man markup from groff as much as possible. 
-- 
                <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a>