Re: [Groff] Back to the future

[Mike Bianchi]

On Thu, Mar 06, 2014 at 11:54:11AM -0500, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
> Ingo Schwarze <address@hidden>:
> > The classical man(7) language is a purely presentational language
> > and contains exactly three semantic macros as exceptions: TH, SH, SS.
> > So basically, nothing except titles is semantic in there.
> I'm aware that we're stuck with presentation-level markup in man macros.

I don't see why we are stuck.  If there were macros that supported a semantic
representation of the common man page structures they could be added to -man.

I imagine:
        .SYNOPSIS
        .Command        man
        .FlagArgOpt     C file
        .FlagArgOpt     d
        .FlagArgOpt     D
        .LongArgOptOpt  warnings  warnings
                . . .
        .Option         section
        .Args           page

        .Command     man
        .FlagArg     -k
        .Option      "apropos options"
        .Args        regexp
                :

        .DESCRIPTION
        .Command man
        is the system's manual pager.
        Each
        .Arg page
        argument given to
        .Command man
        is normally

producing (with appropriate bold and italics)
  SYNOPSIS
        man [-C file] [-d] [-D] [--warnings[=warnings]] . . .
                                                [section] page ...
        man -k [apropos options] regexp ...
                . . .
  DESCRIPTION
        man is the system's manual pager.  Each page argument given to man
        is normally
                . . .

I dare say most people who write man pages copy one that is close enough
to where they think they are going and edit like crazy.
(Start from an empty file?  I don't think so.)
Once there are significant number of man pages in that style, the ecology
would slowly change over time.

Maybe within my life time.

Which is quite a thought.  I was in my mid-20s with I first encountered UNIX.

--
 Mike Bianchi
 Foveal Systems

 973 822-2085

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