Re: [Groff] Replacing groff with troff?

[Larry Kollar]

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"?

That's just one lump in a whole basket full of bizarre. The following  
is really directed at the mdocml dude…

> over 5 MB of source code

Um… there are these things called "hard drives" that you really need  
to look into. Seriously, I compiled groff a while back on a 486-based  
Linux box with a 110MB (that's MB, not GB) drive, which had about  
80MB available for the OS once the MS-DOG & swap partitions got their  
share. And that was the full-zoot groff, not some "base environment."

> most of which is C++ and all of which is GPL

I understand some folks are allergic to GPL, but I fail to see what  
the problem is with C++. Yeah, it took a while to compile groff on  
that 486, but it takes a while to do *anything* on a 486.

> It runs slowly

And that statement pretty much casts everything else you say into  
question. "Runs slowly" compared to what? I haven't found any general- 
purpose formatter that even comes close to groff, speed-wise, and  
don't get me started on GUI tools. Some Unix deployments had a  
"catman" directory with pre-formatted (ASCII) manpages... but are  
there really general-use systems out there these days that are so  
slow, even the overhead for processing a manpage is too much to bear?  
Embedded systems, sure, but who's reading manpages on them?

> produces uncertain output

At this point, I'm convinced that the author has never used groff.

> varies in operation from system to system

Really? I have my work environment set up on MacOSX, Linux, and a  
Dozebox running Cygwin. Works exactly the same on each box. It's  
taking a little work to get it going on GnuWin32, but that's because  
I have to port the support scripts.

Sorry about the rant, but I can't let this disinformation pass  
unchallenged.

        Larry