|
From: | Charlie Kester |
Subject: | Re: [Groff] Replacing groff with troff? |
Date: | Tue, 1 Jun 2010 15:52:40 -0700 |
User-agent: | Mutt/1.5.20 (2009-06-14) |
On Tue 01 Jun 2010 at 12:48:45 PDT Ralph Corderoy wrote:
Hi Charlie,All they're doing is putting mdocml in base to handle manpages.http://mdocml.bsd.lv/ DESCRIPTION mdocml is a suite of tools compiling "-mdoc", the roff macro package of choice for BSD manual pages, and "-man", the predominant historical package for UNIX manuals. The mission of mdocml is to deprecate groff, the GNU roff implementation, for displaying -mdoc pages whilst providing token support for -man. Why? groff amounts to over 5 MB of source code, most of which is C++ and all of which is GPL. It runs slowly, produces uncertain output, and varies in operation from system to system. mdocml strives to fix this (respectively small, C, ISC-licensed, fast and regular). "uncertain output"?
You'd have to ask the author of mdocml what he means by that. I'd be interested in hearing the answer too. As I said, I think groff's GPLv3 license is the main concern with having it in base, although the performance arguments are carrying some weightwith some people.
I didn't join this thread to make (or defend) those arguments, only to try to keep the record straight about what FreeBSD is and is not doing.Disclaimer: I'm just an interested user, not a FreeBSD developer or spokesman. But I'm also an interested user of groff and all other roff related tools!
[Prev in Thread] | Current Thread | [Next in Thread] |