Re: mandoc shortcomings

[christos%astron.com@localhost (Christos Zoulas)]

In article <20151207102250.88f352c370d0dced0f0e5e1e%schemamania.org@localhost>,
James K. Lowden <tech-userlevel%netbsd.org@localhost> wrote:
>On Mon, 7 Dec 2015 01:16:06 -0500
>Thor Lancelot Simon <tls%panix.com@localhost> wrote:
>
>> On Sun, Dec 06, 2015 at 11:19:35PM -0500, James K. Lowden wrote:
>> > I recently upgraded to NetBSD 7.0 and my early experience with the
>> > new mandoc-based man utility is less than wonderful.  I'm concerned
>> > there's a quality-control issue, because the problem could have
>> > been detected in advance of the release: "mandoc -Wall" reports many
>> > errors for the file.  
>> 
>> I just want to be sure I get this right: "the" file?
>> 
>> As in, there's a file mandoc doesn't process correctly?
>
>Yes, namely /usr/share/man/man7/groff.7.  I didn't test every man
>page.  It's part of the basic doc set.  NetBSD should be able to
>display all the man pages that it ships with, don't you agree?  
>
>Maybe there's a setting I missed that will enable mandoc to process
>that page or otherwise get man(1) to display it  correctly.  I doubt
>it, but I'm happy to learn.  From where I sit, the "BSD good, GPL bad"
>mantra seems to have driven us to adopt a system that lacks required
>functionality that's been in the OS for decades.  That doesn't look
>like a step forward.  

I am actually amazed that it does this well given that it is not
implementing the full roff macro set, and this is really not a man
page since it uses low level roff macros (instead of restricting
itself to the -man or -mdoc set).

christos