Re: [Groff] Splitting groff(7)

[Larry Kollar]

Jon Snader wrote:
>   Bernd Warken wrote:
> > IMHO the man page groff(7) is too long.  I propose to split off the
> > predefined language elements into man pages of their own:
> > 
> 
> Yikes!  Please don't do this.  As Werner replied, we'd end up with something
> like the Perl manual, which is completely unusable.  Reading man pages
> shouldn't be like an adventure game.

True. But big manpages are more than a little unwieldy online. The
groff(7) manpage is about as big as a manpage can be and still be
useful on a terminal. The bash(1) manpage is far worse.

The TCL manpage collection goes beyond Perl's; each function call has
a manpage. In a way, that's more workable than Perl's approach since
you don't have to find the manpage that contains the information you're
looking for (plus anything related). The problem is, for TCL and Tk,
the total comes to about 500 manpages!


I think groff(7) is OK as is. It lists printer drivers, options, and
environment variables, then refers to the other 23 groff-related pages
describing preprocessors, post-processors, and macro packages. Then
there's the texinfo manual and various contributed documents if you
*really* need detail. 

        Larry