Re: [Groff] The case against the case against .EX/.EE & .DS/.DE

[Eric S. Raymond]

D. E. Evans <address@hidden>:
> P.S. I know that Eric is shooting for something more dynamic, but
> does this have to be made anymore complicated than a better export
> facility for groff (improvements or replace for grohtml that is
> both standardized for HTML, and perhaps has an XSLT function for a
> simplified XHTML or XML doc)?  

grohtml produces crappy HTML because groff sees nothing but
presentation level.  I've explained this general problem at least
twice now.

>                              It seems that if DocBook wants to do
> something with man pages, why don't they provide an import function?

Because DocBook isn't a program, it's a markup format.  In effect,
doclifter *is* its "import function" for man pages.  The DocBook
maintainers point to doclifter from their website.

> There's enough problems in the symantic web world that a dynamic
> system along Eric's thinking seems premature or superfluous,

Dynamic?  What's dynamic about it?  Feed man markup in one end of a
pipeline, get high-quality HTML out the other.

Also, the "semantic web" isn't involved yet.  The only ontology 
in play is DocBook's quite well-established DTD.

>                                    If online documentation
> is what is intended, I'd rather write those directly in HTML, or
> XHTML, or some other XML schema, and avoid roff, or if originally
> written in roff, converted to HTML for online reference.

Nothing in my scheme stops you from doing that.

> Am I completely missing the point, and being ignorant?

Um, well, yes.
-- 
                <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a>