At Mon, 1 Jun 2015 17:50:07 +0000, David Holland <dholland-tech%netbsd.org@localhost> wrote: Subject: Re: Removing ARCNET stuffs > > (quite seriously, I've been looking for a while for an alternative to > groff for typesetting the miscellaneous articles in base. I don't see how you can be serious, unless you've got objections to viable alternatives that you've not yet voiced (so far as I can find). Way back in 2009 on tech-userlevel I proposed the following: However now that I've looked more closely at the Heirloom Documentation Tools, I think they might be the best all-round replacement for GNU Troff in NetBSD: http://heirloom.sourceforge.net/doctools.html They're already ported and running on NetBSD. They are much better supported than the DWB-3.3 release and already include UTF-8 support. They're possibly even better supported than the Plan 9 version. You were reading that thread, and in your contribution to it you vaguely suggested that your goal would be to replace troff input syntax. However you did not respond to my proposal. On the other hand in a much more recent thread you've said that opening the door to some other input syntax is all too much of an opportunity to create yet another major bikeshed digression (which I agree with!). So, I still propose that we stick to troff for the time being, and that we switch to the real troff, e.g. the heirloom version or its more recent fork. BTW, 'dpost' can produce PDF output, and it could do so _long_ before 2009. I also "vote" to kick out, or at least stop using, this mandoc thing. It is a non-solution that more than muddies the waters. Interesting academically perhaps, but otherwise a major distraction. Making it equivalent to ditroff+pic+eqn+tbl+grap would be a waste of time and energy and focus (though perhaps still academically interesting). Of course if _new_ significant documents are being written then perhaps opportunity should be given to do so with some new tools. My personal vote would be for Lout. It vastly improves on what troff can do, but it also effectively replaces all the other associated and necessary tools (pic, eqn, tbl, grap), and it generates PDFs as well. Given the amount of discussion about this issue over the years I'm actually quite stunned that Heirloom Doctools were not imported long before now, regardless of whether they displaced groff or not. It's no wonder NetBSD gets a reputation of being crotchety and antiquated. Just because licensing issues make keeping up with some of the Jones more difficult doesn't mean we should have leave those particular components in the gutter of history forever. Groff was a valiant attempt to avoid licensing issues in its early days (and I still highly admire Clark for creating it, though I have always despised his choice to learn C++ while doing so), but now it too can be considered just another alternative, and not it has its own licensing issues. -- Greg A. Woods Planix, Inc. <woods%planix.com@localhost> +1 250 762-7675 http://www.planix.com/
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