Re: Groff

[tlaronde%polynum.com@localhost]

On Thu, Jun 04, 2015 at 08:05:16AM +0300, Aleksej Saushev wrote:
> tlaronde%polynum.com@localhost writes:
> 
>> [pledge for TeX---not TexLive]
> 
> There's a lot better approach that beats all the above on all accounts.
> 
> Import libxml2, libxslt, w3m that are all readily available, convert man
> pages to a human-readable and human-writable format, which is XML,
> and stop using archaic formats.
> 
> This has a number of significant benefits over TeX or roff:
> 1. XML is well-known, the syntax doesn't require anything special to learn.
> 2. There's abundancy of software to process it.
> 3. XML can be used immediately, without preprocessing step (just point
> web browser at it, and it will load stylesheet and perform XSL
> transformation for you).
> 4. Desktop users will have really good rendering as provided by Firefox
> or Webkit.

That there may be not software but bloatware: Firefox and al. to
succeed, more or less, to provide a rendering has nothing to appeal to
me. That this bloat format has to be processed by tools that depend on
gigabytes of software needing C++ compiler and al. to ---try to--- be
compiled is definitively not what I call a "system" typesetting. Needing
gigs of memory to try to run firefox or chrome or whatever has nothing
to appeal to me; not to mention that the last time I gave a try to
compile chromium it retrieved half of the Google cache as dependencies,
took hours of compilation (on a rather decent computer) to finally fail
to _link_ the objects because 4 gigs of memory was not enough!!!!!

Furthermore, all the text tools provided by the system (and even only
the POSIX.2 text tools) can be readily used on a TeX file.

Finally, my idea would be the reverse: use the lean TeX engine (and even
the METAFONT engine) to format and rasterize for a hypertext page viewer
(a "browser") to display. A hypertext page viewer, able to render
including state of the art mathematical typesetting and figures, with a
small pure C program with enuncombered licence.

But I guess that I'm one of the few that still use Plan9 or NetBSD (or
*BSD) because "small is beautiful" and because for me freedom means
depending the least possible on not "maintenable" (not holding in
one's---mine--hand) things.

And the irony is that I'm convinced that the undercover actual Third
World War will become an open Third World War and that anything
depending on "external" and world inteconnection will simply cease to 
exist and that "my" line of choice is more sustainable than others.
I'm out of the trend now; but the trend changes, and changes
independently from the ones who follow it... (That's why, for the
very same reason as stated above, I do not follow trend, I simply
do what I feel correct to do. I may be wrong, but my error is
neither caused by wanting to be sync with fashion nor by wanting
systematically to be out of fashion: I simply ignore fashion.)

I gather that I will not convince you; but you can surely conclude that
you will never convince me ;)

-- 
        Thierry Laronde <tlaronde +AT+ polynum +dot+ com>
                     http://www.kergis.com/
                     http://www.arts-po.fr/
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