A short mdoc history.

A short mdoc history.

[Kristaps Dzonsons]

Hi,

Can anybody provide a short history of the mdoc package?  I'd like to
slap it into the HISTORY section once and for all.  Ingo has already
provided a useful one for man.7.

(This history should cover the re-write of mdoc.7 in 2000.)

Thanks,

Kristaps
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Re: A short mdoc history.

[Ingo Schwarze]

Hi Kristaps,

> Can anybody provide a short history of the mdoc package?  I'd like to
> slap it into the HISTORY section once and for all.  Ingo has already
> provided a useful one for man.7.

Checking the UNIX archive, i found that the following is correct
as a starting point:

  The mdoc language first appeared as a macro package for the troff
  typesetting system in 4.4 BSD.

In particular, tmac.an was present in 4.3 BSD, but tmac.doc was not.
The original Berkeley Copyright in 4.4 BSD was:

  @(#)doc 5.11 (Berkeley) 7/14/92

> (This history should cover the re-write of mdoc.7 in 2000.)

Hm, looking at

  groff-1.20.1/tmac/doc.tmac

the file still has a Berkeley Copyright,

  @(#)doc 8.1 (Berkeley) 06/08/93

an then:

.\" Modified by jjc@jclark.com as follows: the doc-* files are assumed to be
.\" installed as mdoc/doc-* rather than tmac.doc-* (the filename
.\" `tmac.doc-common' would be too long); when using groff, the doc-* files
.\" are loaded using the `mso' request.
.\"
.\" Modified by
.\"
.\"   Werner LEMBERG <wl@gnu.org>      and
.\"   Ruslan Ermilov <ru@freebsd.org>
.\"
.\" to make it more readable: using long names and many groff features,
.\" updating and extending documentation, etc.

Carelessly, this does not even state the Copyright years of the work
done by James Clark, Werner Lemberg and Ruslan Ermilov...

So it does not look like it was completely rewritten,
rather, it says "modified".

One would need to do more research on the GNU troff site
and look at old groff distributions, but my time is out now...

Yours,
  Ingo
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Re: A short mdoc history.

[Kristaps Dzonsons]

Hi,

After Ingo's welcome sleuthing, I put this together.  I'm going to
commit it: if anybody has issues, let me know and I can back it out
and/or argue.

% mandoc -Owidth=68 mdoc.7
[snip]
HISTORY
     The mdoc language first appeared as a troff macro package in
     4.4BSD.  It was later significantly updated by Werner Lemberg
     and Ruslan Ermilov in groff-1.20.1.  The standalone
     implementation that is part of the mandoc(1) utility written by
     Kristaps Dzonsons appeared in OpenBSD 4.6.

This is more or less the dual of man.7.  I don't think we need anything
more specific.  Comments?

Kristaps
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Re: A short mdoc history.

[Sascha Wildner]

On 8/22/2010 17:47, Kristaps Dzonsons wrote:
> % mandoc -Owidth=68 mdoc.7
> [snip]
> HISTORY
>       The mdoc language first appeared as a troff macro package in
>       4.4BSD.  It was later significantly updated by Werner Lemberg
>       and Ruslan Ermilov in groff-1.20.1.  The standalone
>       implementation that is part of the mandoc(1) utility written by
>       Kristaps Dzonsons appeared in OpenBSD 4.6.

Hmm, updated in 1.20.1? I think it was already quite different at least 
in 1.19.1. Maybe the version number should be just left away until more 
is known.

Sascha
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Re: A short mdoc history.

[Kristaps Dzonsons]

Sascha Wildner wrote:
> On 8/22/2010 17:47, Kristaps Dzonsons wrote:
>> % mandoc -Owidth=68 mdoc.7
>> [snip]
>> HISTORY
>>       The mdoc language first appeared as a troff macro package in
>>       4.4BSD.  It was later significantly updated by Werner Lemberg
>>       and Ruslan Ermilov in groff-1.20.1.  The standalone
>>       implementation that is part of the mandoc(1) utility written by
>>       Kristaps Dzonsons appeared in OpenBSD 4.6.
> 
> Hmm, updated in 1.20.1? I think it was already quite different at least
> in 1.19.1. Maybe the version number should be just left away until more
> is known.

The CVS log follows (version 1.2).  It's under sticky tag 1.17 at the
earliest I can find.  Can anybody make this more specific or give an ok?

Fri Mar 23 00:17:51 2001 UTC (9 years, 5 months ago) by wlemb
Branch: MAIN
Changes since 1.1: +6115 -3308 lines

Replaced mdoc implementation.  The new version is `state of the
art', using almost all new features of groff 1.17 -- it won't run
with older versions.

* tmac/doc.tmac: Completely rewritten.
* tmac/doc-common: Ditto.
* tmac/doc-nroff: Ditto.
* tmac/doc-ditroff: Ditto.
* tmac/doc-syms: Ditto.
* tmac/mdoc.local: New file.
* tmac/groff_mdoc.samples.man: Replaced with ...
* tmac/groff_mdoc.reference.man: New file, covering mdoc completely.
* tmac/strip.sed: Updated.
* tmac/Makefile.sub: Updated.
* INSTALL: Updated.

* tmac/groff_man.man: Add `man.local' to the FILES section.
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